


Our Souls (they were made to last)

by Mellaithwen



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Movie Fusion, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Doctor!Bucky, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Happy Ending, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Medical Procedures, Mutual Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, Stucky Big Bang 2016, War Veteran Steve Rogers, ghost!bucky, just like heaven, love letter to new york, no one dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-08-11 08:06:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 53,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7883266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mellaithwen/pseuds/Mellaithwen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dr. James Barnes is too busy saving lives to actually have one of his own. When he finally agrees to go on a blind date, he gets into an accident that will change his life forever.</p><p>Retired Army Captain Steve Rogers is depressed, and when he moves into his new apartment he finds it already occupied....with the ghost of its last tenant. To make matters worse, the ghost is adamant that he's not dead.</p><p>As they navigate their way through their new living arrangements, can they save each other, before it’s too late? Or have they missed their one shot at a happy ending?</p><p> </p><p>  <b>Just Like Heaven Movie AU</b><br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Souls (they were made to last)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Sanders Bohlke - 'Til my days are through. 
> 
> This is based on the film Just Like Heaven (2005) and some of the dialogue has been lifted directly from that. The fic is set in three parts, Before, During and After. Before and After are from Bucky's POV, while During is from Steve's POV.
> 
> For the sake of artistic license, let’s pretend that the fictional Metro General, is in fact around about where New York Presbyterian/Lower Manhattan hospital is…and my sincerest apologies for any medical inaccuracies! I researched what I could but I am most certainly not a doctor, and this will definitely have more movie!medicine than real life medicine.
> 
> I have to say a huge thank you to my artist on the bang [duendeverde4](http://archiveofourown.org/users/DuendeVerde4)!! her amazing fanmix is [[ h e r e ]](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7879960) and thank you as well to resident cheerleader [shortsighted_owl](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Shortsighted_Owl/pseuds/Shortsighted_Owl) they've both been so encouraging, mostly when I've been pulling my own hair out, and I couldn't have finished this without them!
> 
> Saying that, I did create the cover-art on a whim, so my own procrastinating didn't help matters... [see it h e r e ](http://mellaithwen.tumblr.com/post/149575771636/title-our-souls-they-were-made-to-last-by)

 

.

.

 

**Before.**

 

.

.

 

James feels calm.  
  
He takes in a deep breath of fresh, _clean_ air, and lets it out with a content sigh. He can’t remember the last time he left the city, but here, now, he can stretch his arms out wide and instead of bumping into passing commuters on their way home, he can reach out and touch the tall sunflowers that are growing beside him. The field ahead stretches for miles in every direction, and the only sound he can hear is the creaking of stalks that sway and bend in the breeze. The sun is at his back, and he can feel the day’s anxiety fading away.  
  
Something grabs his shoulder, “Dr. Barnes?” someone calls and he’s—  
  
Awake.  
  
James blinks and he’s back in the hospital—sitting on the hard plastic seats that line this particular corridor, staring at the large painting in front of him, with his head leant back against the wall—and he’s not alone.  
  
“You know the rest of us come up here to stare at the newborns, but here you are in a field full of daisies.” James hears a man’s voice say and he looks up to see his friend and mentor Dr. Timothy Dugan take a seat beside him. He gives James a little smile as he settles back against the chair, his moustache twitching in mirth.  
  
“Sunflowers,” James corrects with a smirk, that Dugan returns with an exasperated sigh. “How long was I out?” James asks, referring to his spaced out staring. The mural in paediatrics always did have a meditative effect on him.  
  
“Can’t have been more than ten minutes.” Dugan replies, before standing slowly, groaning a little as he goes. “Come on, let me buy you a cup of coffee.” He says, as a part of their running joke because neither of them actually have the time or inclination to venture further than the break-room machine for their regular dose of caffeine.  
  
Barnes gets up and follows Dugan down the corridor.  
  
“How long have you been on?” The older doctor asks.  
  
“What time is it?”  
  
“2pm.”  
  
“So that would be…twenty one hours.” James replies as he pushes the break room door open. The room smells stuffy, and there’s no one else around, but the collection of empty paper cups in the trash tells them that most of the staff have already gotten their fix for the time being.  
  
James grabs a fresh cup, slots it under the ancient nozzle, presses the button, and nothing happens.  
  
James groans.  
  
“Don’t do this to me, baby.” He whines, thumping his forehead against the side of the coffee-maker.  
  
“Go home already.” Dugan insists, ignoring his resident’s plight.  
  
“I need you.” James whispers to the machine, as though Dugan hadn’t even said a word.  
  
“Oh for crying out loud, Jimmy.” The older physician says before slamming his hand against the side of the coffee machine with a _bang_. It splutters to life before churning out a dark brown sludge that plops into the waiting cup ominously.  
  
“That’s not my name, _Dum-Dum_ ,” James says in lieu of a thank you as he rolls his eyes at their old familiar back and forth. “And going home isn’t gonna get me an attending slot any time soon.”  
  
“I don’t think keeling over will either, kid.” Dugan says wisely. “You can’t do a good job if you’re dead on your feet.”  
  
“Haven’t you heard?” James asks, taking a great big gulp of the god awful drink as he leaves the break room—and Dugan—behind, “this coffee can raise the dead!”

 

 

***

 

 

“I took care of trauma two while you were sleeping in the NICU.” James hears Brock Rumlow—fellow resident and all round pain-in-the-ass—say as he heads towards him. Brock smirks as he discards bloody gloves into a hazardous waste bin, while the trauma patient is wheeled out of the room behind him, alive, and stable. For a second James actually feels guilty for the six or seven minute cat-nap he dared to take.  
  
“I wasn't sleeping—” James starts to say, weakly defending himself, but Rumlow isn’t listening, and instead he walks away, shouting, “You’re welcome!” over his shoulder as he does so.  
  
“Asshole.” James mutters under his breath.  
  
“You're on in five and eight!” One of the nurses, Peter, tells James on his way out, handing over the charts, before disappearing in the direction of a certain Gwen Stacey.  
  
It isn’t long before an elderly lady asks for his hand in marriage, and Daisy, his medical student, laughs, before begging to be his maid of honour.  
  
“Let me just call my brother-in-law to see if I can borrow his tux.” James says obligingly to his patient, before turning back to Daisy. “Keep an eye on my fiancé,” he says quietly, “and decrease her morphine drip.”  
  
“Get off me!” Someone shouts down the corridor, just as James leaves one room to head to the next, and he gets a glimpse of Rumlow and Ward trying to tackle an aggressive patient until Dugan steps in to save the day.  
  
When they’re done, the patient pushes Grant out of the way, and Ward, still off-kilter, ends up crashing into Falsworth, sending his arm-full of charts up into the air before crashing back down. Grant tries to help, stumbling, and making things worse, until James jogs towards them, and takes over in clean up.  
  
“Bloody idiot,” Monty moans when Ward’s out of earshot. “It’s like they all make it to their fourth year of medical school and their spacial awareness just goes to shit.”  
  
“Be nice.” James chastises, stacking the last of the papers back into the other doctor’s waiting arms.  
  
“I am nice!” Falsworth argues, sounding offended, calling back over his shoulder as he walks away. “That’s why I’m saying it to you instead of yelling at _them_!”  
  
James rolls his eyes, and slips back into his regular routine. He does his rounds, sees his patients, and only takes a long enough break for a quick shot of more brown sludge, and the occasional bite of the shared pasta-salad at the nurse’s station.  
  
“You’re a god,” he says to Claire, when she hands him a granola bar and takes the charts out of his hands before he drops them.  
  
“I know,” the nurse says wryly as she rests the chart on the desk, and ties her dark brown hair up into a ponytail, out of the way. James reaches for the fresh chart she’s clearly planning on handing over to him, but she moves it out of reach before he gets a chance. “Nuh-uh,” she says. “Sustenance first,” and she gestures to the bar in his hand, withholding the chart until he’s inhaled the food in its entirety. When he’s done he trades his empty wrapper for the clipboard, and Claire pats him on the head.  
  
“Good boy,” she jokes before heading off to handle her own ever-growing list of patients while James deals with his next one.

 

 

***

 

 

“So where were you both headed? A wedding?” James asks, when he pulls back the privacy curtain to see a man and a woman dressed to the nines.  
  
“We already tried that.” Says the woman slyly, shaking her head, and making her carefully curled blonde locks tousle against her neck. Her long black and white ball gown looks more than a little out of place in the cubicle of the emergency room, as do the small red dots of blood spatter that sit on the silky material.  
  
Dr. Barnes frowns, and the patient—sat on the gurney with his bow tie hanging loose and unfurled from his bloody collar—says, “She’s my wife, doc,” in a distinctive British accent.  
  
“Ex,” the blonde says, as though it’s a reminder she has to give often. “ _Ex_ -wife, as in _no longer_.”  
  
“Ex.” The patient mutters, a little nasally, while James puts on a fresh pair of gloves. “Ex-marriage, _bereft of life_ , rest in peace.” The man says, with one side of his face smeared red from blood, half-quoting an old Monty Python sketch, while adjusting the gauze that he’s been pressing up against the deep gash in his hairline.  
  
“‘Kicked the bucket,’” James says, grinning as he continues the butchered quote that the patient had begun. “‘Shuffled off its mortal coil—’”  
  
“‘Run down the curtain and—’”  
  
“‘ _Joined the bleedin’ choir invisible!_ ” James and his patient say in unison, laughing, while the blonde woman rolls her eyes in exasperation. “Every time,” she mutters under her breath, but if James had to guess, he’d say that there was a little fondness in her tone. “Every damn time.”  
  
“I’m Detective Hunter,” the patient says, putting his hand out for James to shake, and grinning so widely that the blood on his teeth is unmistakeable. “And this is Detective Bobbi Morse.  
  
“James,” Barnes greets in response, opting for his first name over his second. “Always nice to meet a Monty Python fan.” He says as he pushes Hunter’s hands down, removing the gauze and gently prodding at the head wound that’s only bleeding sluggishly now. “The nurse tells me you got into a barfight?”  
  
“As usual.” Bobbi says just before Hunter launches into a long winded—and if James were to guess, _heavily redacted_ —story about chasing a suspect in the middle of a sting gone wrong, before ending up in a less-than-savoury corner of New York City, in the middle of an Irish bar filled with the criminal’s cronies.  
  
“Yeah,” Morse interjects then, “and you nearly blew the whole operation over something stupid—”  
  
“He threatened you, Bob.” Hunter says through gritted teeth, clearly uncomfortable with his current treatment, despite Dr. Barnes’ expert ministrations and the local anaesthetic that’s already been administered.  
  
“He…what? You never told me that.”  
  
Hunter shrugs, and James accounts for the movements as he threads the last stitch through the skin, and finishes up. Morse is edging closer now, and James knows better than to stick around.  
  
“I’ll send the nurse in with instructions and a prescription in a couple minutes.” He says, but they’re not paying any attention. Morse’s fingers are straightening Hunter’s collar, lingering over the blood stains there, and yup, there’s definitely more than a little fondness in the look that she’s giving him.  
  
“I don’t need a knight in shining armour,” she says quietly. “I need _you_.”  
  
James ducks his head and leaves. _That must be nice_ , he thinks.

 

 

***

 

 

“Don’t cry sweetie,” James hears a mother say as she soothes her little boy, distracting him from the shot he’s getting in his arm, while the drunk girl in trauma two keeps switching off her monitor because she can’t stand the beeping, and the addict in five kicks James in the shin when he won’t prescribe him any opiates.    
  
“Mr. Morales needs to know how to redress his sutures,” he tells Grant as he hands over the charts, “but then he can be discharged, and Dolores in three needs an EKG, I don't like those swollen ankles.”  
  
Grant nods keenly, and runs off—Barnes only hopes he doesn’t collide into any more senior doctors on his way, he’s made enough enemies as it is.  
  
It’s been a long-ass-day and now that it’s turned into night, a few of their regulars have already started to make an appearance. James is just glad it’s not his turn to deal with Eugene.  
  
“Flash is here, who wants him?” the EMT says to the desk, while his partner wheels the stretcher in from the ambulance bay.  
  
“Flash?” Daisy asks, and Claire smiles.  
  
“Eugene _“Flash_ ” Thompson.” She clarifies, having gotten the rundown from the other paramedic. “Mild hypothermia, and possible stress fracture in his right foot.”  
  
“That sounds pretty straightforward,” Daisy says, looking around at the other doctors in confusion. “What’s the big deal?”  
  
Claire is about to answer when they hear a slight commotion behind one of the curtains, and a second later, a blonde twenty-two year old starts trying to do laps in the middle of the ED, despite his hobbling.  
  
And he’s completely, and utterly, naked.  
  
“That’s Flash,” Claire says, as she hands Daisy the chart, “have fun!”

 

 

***

 

 

Barnes gets yelled at on his way to the bathroom, and he can hear someone moaning in the very last stall. He diagnoses a urinary tract infection in six, and he deals with a shattered rib cage in eight. Daisy winces all the while, but still manages to listen intently to everything that’s being said.  
  
Another patient codes, and James helps bring her back. He hadn’t noticed one of the senior doctors watching him, but he can feel the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end, seconds before said doctor invades his personal space.  
  
“Nice work, Dr. Barnes.” Dr. Alexander Pierce says, with an edge to his voice that James can’t discern. “I’ve been monitoring your work closely.  
  
“Uh, thank you sir.” James says, before he’s called away on an urgent code, and he tries not to think too much into the creepy conversation.  
  
He tells a woman that her husband doesn’t have long, and when he goes to leave, she squeezes his hand like a vice. It’s as if without it, the woman might lose her tether, and everything she holds dear will be gone. The touch grounds him, and he hopes it grounds her. She turns to her family, eventually letting go, and they envelop her in comfort and support as he makes his exit.  
  
He sees a young girl shuffling in front of a cubicle in the corridor, and when they make eye contact she darts forward to grab his sleeve.  
  
“My brother—our car, please, can I go in?” Her voice sounds strained, and he thinks her accent might be Eastern European. Her eyes are wide, and her makeup is smudged so much that the dark circles under her eyes seem so much more pronounced. She looks terrified and pale and she’s shaking like a leaf.  
  
James stops, and looks over to the closed curtains of cubicle four. He can see plenty of pairs of feet there and he can imagine how crowded it must be already.  
  
“Did they ask you to wait outside?” He asks, and she nods. “Okay, as soon as they know what’s going on, they’ll come get you. Why don’t we sit down?” He suggests, guiding the young girl to a chair across the way.  
  
“Has anyone had a look at you?” he asks her and she nods again.  
  
“Yes, but my brother—he—he was shouting… _so loud_ …”  
  
“They’ll take good care of him,” James tells her. She’s wringing her hands in her lap, picking at the already chipped nail polish on her fingernails, and worrying her rings around her fingers. “Hey, what’s your name?” He asks.  
  
“Wanda.” She says distractedly, staring off in the direction of where her brother is being treated.  
  
“Wanda, that’s a nice name. Do you guys live nearby?” She shakes her head. “Where’re you from?” He asks, keeping her occupied as he gently takes her wrist in his to monitor her pulse.  
  
“Sokovia,” she says with a far off look. “It’s….it’s near Austria.” She sounds dazed but James gets the impression it’s a clarification she needs to use often. “My brother—is he?”  
  
“They’re working on him now.” James reminds her. “Is there someone we can call for you guys?”  
  
Wanda nods. “My father,” she whispers. “We’re staying with him.”  
  
“Okay, that’s good,” James says, just before he hears over the tannoy that an oncoming trauma needs all available personnel, and he can see his medical student, Daisy, running towards him.  
  
“Dr. Barnes,” she says, apologetically. “They need you in the med-bay.”  
  
James nods, and turns back to the young girl sat beside him.  
  
“Okay, Wanda, this is Daisy, she’s gonna get your dad on the phone—” Daisy nods helpfully. “—and we’ll get you an update on your brother as soon as we can, okay?” He smiles at her before turning and running towards the main entrance to the trauma area.  
  
“Alright guys, what have we got?”

 

***

 

 

James heads over to the break room, desperate for another coffee, only to find a handful of doctors and nurses doing the same—all in various stages of exhaustion, waiting as the age-old machine churns out the brown goop that will sustain them for at least another three hours of their long shifts.  
  
“Ugh, I had to pretend to be nice to that creep in radiology for nearly an hour.” Jim Morita, from neurology moans, while sitting in a wheelchair that had been stored in the corner—leaning back, balancing precariously, with his legs in the air.  
  
“Which one? Zola?” Dernier asks, before he kicks the back of the wheelchair, interrupting Morita’s wheelies.  “He’s friends with Pierce, right?”  
  
“Yeah, and _Schmidt_.”  
  
“Oh my god, I remember him! Is he still practising?” Claire pipes up, when it’s finally her turn to use the coffee machine.  
  
“Not if Phillips and the police have anything to say about it.” Jim says darkly, but no more is said on the matter.  
  
“Hey Monty, how’s that kid doing in four?” Barnes asks Dr. Falsworth, having noticed his distinctive loafers behind the cubicle curtain earlier while he’d been talking with the boy’s sister. “The kid from Sokovia?”  
  
“You mean the car accident?” Falsworth clarifies. “He was speeding when his car hit a lamp-post, but he’ll be okay. Broken arm, some bad bruising from the seatbelt, and the sister’s a little shook up still, but they’ll be fine.”  
  
“Their dad turned up just before my shift ended and he is _pissed_.” Dugan says, as he steps out from behind his locker door.  
  
“Hey, look at you!” James remarks, grinning when he spots that Dugan is all dressed up. He’s wearing a clean check shirt with a smart brown jacket, and he’s even smoothed his hair down, and parted it to the side.  
  
“Hot date?” Morita asks, while Dernier lets out a cheeky wolf-whistle.  
  
“Shut up, the lot of you,” Dugan grumbles, his cheeks turning red. “I’m meeting the ex-wife for dinner—she hasn’t told her mother about the divorce, and I don’t want to be responsible for a ninety-five-year old woman keeling over.”  
  
“So noble.” James jokes.  
  
“So _handsome_ ,” Claire says.  
  
“I’ll trade my night shift with you,” Falsworth offers. “I have to sew four caterpillar costumes for Jacqueline’s dance recital.”  
  
“Poor kid,” Morita smirks. “I’ve seen your sutures, they’re almost as bad as Dernier's! The little spitfire hasn’t got a chance!”  
  
“ _T’es rien qu’un petit connard_ ,” Jacques pipes up in his native French, to which Morita smirks and blows a kiss in his direction. Dernier then throws a bag of peanuts at Morita’s face, and grins when it hits him square on the nose.  
  
“Play nice, Commandos!” Dugan says, with a mock salute as he leaves, grabbing his hat in his hand and smoothing his hair down one more time. They all wish him a good night.  
  
“I don’t know you all do it, between my work here and Gina’s at the University, I barely get a chance to _see_ her let alone get laid—” Morita starts to complain with a sigh, to which Falsworth wrinkles his nose.  
  
“Must you?” He asks. While Sue, from radiology rolls her eyes. “Oh please, Reed’s always pestering me for kids and I barely even have time to shave my legs.”  
  
“Stop shaving, then he’ll leave you alone.” Claire jokes, as she tilts her coffee cup by way of goodbye on her way out. She holds the door open for Falsworth and Sue who follow her soon after.  
  
“Man, Barnes, you’re lucky all you have to worry about is work!” Morita says as he leaves, slapping his colleague on the back as he goes.  
  
James lets out a sigh now that he’s alone, and stares at himself in the reflection of the coffee machine. He looks at the white coat he worked so hard to achieve, and the smudged dark circles that have taken up permanent residence under his eyes. _Lucky_ isn’t exactly the word he would use.  
  
As he leaves the break room, Daisy comes running up to him, with an X-Ray print in her hands.  
  
“Dr. Barnes? Can you take a look at this? It’s Katherine Pryde’s ankle, in bed two.”  
  
“Man,” James says, taking the film from her hands and holding it up to the light. “She’s a sweet kid but I swear she thinks she can walk through walls.” He mutters, squinting until he’s certain that there’s no break in the bone.  
  
“There’s no fracture,” he tells Daisy as he hands the X-Ray back to her. “Just wrap it up, and you can send her home.  
  
“Great,” she says as she goes to leaves. “Oh hey, Dr. Barnes? I heard Dr. Pierce wants you to head up his new trauma centre in D.C, is that true? Are you gonna be leaving us?”  
  
And Barnes frowns because frustratingly enough he’s heard the same rumour, from everyone _but_ the source. Not that it’s something he even wants, by any means. He’d much rather stay in New York under Dr. Phillips, but he’s not gonna lie, getting asked would be a pretty big honour. Earlier he’d overheard Rumlow talking to his friends about how he was a shoe in for both the position in D.C. as well as the attending slot in New York, so who knows?  
  
Just then his phone rings. _Saved by the bell.  
  
_ “You shouldn’t believe everything you hear, Daisy!” He says, as he answers the call, and Daisy nods before heading off.  
  
_“You’re still coming, right?”_ Is the first thing James hears as he answers his phone—the tinny voice of Natasha, his sister in everything but blood, demands his attention.  
  
“Of course I’m still coming, Nat, I’m not a total asshole.” He replies, wincing internally as a young boy sitting with his mother in the waiting room repeats his curse-word aloud. _Asshole,_ the boy says with a lisp and way too much glee. His mother glares. Oops.  
  
“You’re lying.” Nat continues on the other end of the call, oblivious to James’ accidental corruption of New York’s youth.  
  
“Would I do that to you?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Well that’s harsh.” James moans. “But, really, I’m not flaking out on this one.”  
  
“Good!” Nat exclaims, just as James hears Liho the cat screech out a loud meow followed hurriedly by Lucky’s responding bark. Nat continues, more than a little used to the animal chorus. “Because I really think you’re gonna hit it off with this guy.”  
  
“You know you said that last time, right?”  
  
“Okay, how was I supposed to know you wouldn’t hit it off with the french gymnast who was into martial arts—”  
  
“Ugh please don’t remind me, Batroc was the worst—”  
  
“And how was I supposed to know that you and Petruski wouldn’t get along? I mean you were in the third grade together—”  
  
“Pretty sure he used to eat paste—”  
  
“Or that Kraven was so—”  
  
“Into _killing wildlife?_ He spent three hours telling me about the last hunt he’d been on,” James sighs, and he can hear his sister gearing up for another recount of yet another one of his failed dates so he interrupts her before she has a chance. “Look Nat, have you even met this guy?”  
  
“Not…as…such,” she says, “but he’s a friend of an old friend, and he’s not a serial killer, I checked.”  
  
“Well that’s reassuring.” James winces, though he’s at least glad that Nat’s stopped trying to set him up with the guys from her law firm.  
  
“Considering your track record, you really can’t afford to be so picky.”  
  
“Hey, a really nice old lady proposed to me this morning—”  
  
“And I’m sure she was lovely,” Nat agrees, “but I think she’s missing a few body parts to make that marriage work with you don’tcha’ think?”  
  
“Hey, love works in mysterious ways.”  
  
“What would you know about it?”  
  
“Meany.” James pouts, though he knows she has a point.  
  
“You’re my little brother, it’s my job.”  
  
“Whatever, we were in the same graduating class.” James says. “I’ll see you at 7, okay?”  
  
“It’s nearly seven now—”  
  
“Forty. Seven- _forty_.”  
  
“Perfect! Oh and the front step’s crooked so try not to trip on your way up.”  
  
James hears an incoming trauma alert over the tannoy, and up ahead he can see Dr. Phillips being briefed.  
  
“Nat, I gotta go, I’ll see you soon, okay?”  
  
“See ya, _brother from another mother_.”  
  
“Buh-bye, _sister from another mister_.” James responds accordingly before he hangs up—slipping the phone into his pocket as he jogs the rest of the way to Phillips’ side. Rumlow follows suit, and soon the both of them are being stared down by the older doctor.  
  
Dr. Phillips is a hard-ass, and he’s considered to be a curmudgeon by most on his _good_ days, but for the most part, James gets the impression that the man actually likes him. More importantly, he has final say on who will get the attending position at Metro-General, something that James desperately wants.  
  
“Incoming gunshot victim, internal haemorrhaging.” Phillips says, getting straight to the point now that Barnes and Rumlow have assembled in front of him outside of the trauma bay. “How long have you been here?” He asks Rumlow.  
  
“Twelve hours.” Rumlow says, practically bouncing with how much he’s itching to get the patient, to prove his worth and put him in the lead for the attending slot. Phillips nods, and turns to James, asking him the same question.  
  
“A...few more that that.” James admits, albeit reluctantly.  
  
“All right, Brock, it’s yours."  
  
“I'll scrub up.” He announces, before disappearing into the room. James can feel his future slipping through his fingers, and if he weren’t so tired, he thinks he might have even said as much.  
  
“Barnes.” Phillips barks as Barnes turns to leave.  
  
“Yes, sir?” He stands up a little straighter. Phillips always did remind him of a drill sergeant. Some days the man was more _Colonel_ than _Doctor_ .  
  
“I was going to wait until tomorrow, but I wanted to let you know that I've made my decision—”  
  
And here it is, his future is coming to a screeching halt in the middle of the emergency department for all to see.  
  
“—I want you to stay on as an attending physician.” Phillips says and James finds himself blinking dumbly in response.  
  
“What? I mean, really? You do?”  
  
“You’ve earned it, son. You spend more time being concerned with what’s best for your patient, than kissing my ass.” Phillips looks over his shoulder to the direction Brock was headed in earlier—his meaning is clear. “It’s a risky move,” Phillips jokes. “But I like it.”  
  
“Sir...I don’t know what to say. _Thank you._ There’s so much I want to do, and I can’t wait to get started—”  
  
“Barnes, there’s just one thing i need from you first.”  
  
“Yes sir, anything.”  
  
“Go home. You’ve been here twenty-six hours.” Phillips says knowingly, making his previous question on the matter seemingly redundant. “Don’t you have a date to get to?”  
  
“How did you—”  
  
“I know all.”  
  
“But—”  
  
“If you have something to say, right now would be a perfect time to keep it to yourself. Now _go_.”

 

 

***

 

 

It takes James all of ten minutes to change, and get ready. He’s opted for his signature dark skinny jeans, and black leather jacket, but the grey shirt he’s wearing is brand new. He’s styled his hair into a slight coiff that Falsworth complimented him on when he walked past, so it can’t look _that_ bad.  
  
He’s just running for the elevators when he sees Dr. Pierce waiting for the next one too. He nods hello, and having only expected the same in response, he’s surprised when the older man turns to face him instead.  
  
“Let me get right to it, James.” The man says. “You’re an asset to this hospital. Your work is a gift to mankind, and you’re going to help shape the medical world as we know it. I just want you do it with me, in D.C.”  
  
“Uh, Sir, I’m honoured—”  
  
“Good. Then you’ll take the position?”  
  
“It’s just—”  
  
“I took the liberty of getting Renata to draft up the paperwork so everything should be in order.” Pierce says, and he reminds James of something, but he can’t put his finger on exactly what. Something about his voice, his mannerisms...  
  
“I’m sorry sir, but I’ve just been offered the attending position here.”  
  
“Here?” Pierce scoffs, as though he hadn’t worked there himself for the better part of thirty years. “My trauma centre will be the pioneer in breakthrough procedures.” Pierce continues, ignoring James’ words. “You’ll see more in one week there, than you would here in _a year_.”  
  
“Yes sir, but my life’s here. My family’s in New York.”  
  
“I see.” Pierce says, sounding annoyed. “You know, I worked with your father for a few years at Mount Sinai, he’s been dead for some time, has he not?” He says bluntly, but James is more than a little used to the older doctor’s lack of tact. “I was under the impression you didn’t have any other family?”  
  
_A snake._ James realises then. That’s what Pierce reminds him of, a snake in the grass.  
  
“I’m afraid you’re mistaken.” James says, resorting to the diplomatic tone he usually reserves for his older patients who begrudge taking orders from a much younger doctor. He doesn’t want this snake to bite, but he doesn’t want to get into bed with it either. “In fact,” he says. “I’m running late to see them now, so if you’ll excuse me.”  
  
He may not have said _fuck you_ outright, but his tone certainly conveyed as much.

 

 

***

 

 

James sees Rumlow standing near the exit, just as he finishes the phone call he’s on. He starts looking through his satchel in search of the keys to his flashy sports car—the epitome of pointlessness, when James knows for a fact that he only lives a couple blocks away.  
  
“Congratulations.” Rumlow says when he spots James coming towards him.  
  
“Thank you,” James says, “I had no idea Phillips was going to—”  
  
“I’m going to D.C.” Brock interrupts, and James lets him have this. “With Pierce, he just offered me the position.” Rumlow clarifies, waving his cellphone in the air, even though they both know it isn’t necessary. “So it makes sense for you to have the attending job here, since I won’t need it.”  
  
“Right.”  
  
“So that’s that. See you around, Barnes.” He says dismissively, and James lets him leave without a care. He stays standing in the doorway, sighing at the downpour outside, and the wasted effort he put into styling his hair. Claire sidles up behind him and lifts the collar of his leather jacket so that it’s upturned against his neck.  
  
“Quit stalling,” she says before pushing a folded up newspaper into his chest. “We’re all out of umbrellas.” She explains simply, before nudging James closer to the door. Barnes rolls his eyes amusedly, before nodding his thanks, unfurling the broadsheet, and putting it over his head to keep the worst of the downpour away from his hair. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing, and if he’s lucky he’ll make it to the station before he _drowns_.  
  
He needs to get the R Train from City Hall so he runs down Beekman Street and cuts through the park, which is exactly when his cellphone starts to ring. He knows who it will be before he even answers, so he only slows his pace down to a jog, instead of stopping completely.  
  
_“Is your hair suitably coiffed?”_ Nat asks, bypassing any kind of greeting, as the call connects and James laughs into the phone.  
  
“Yes, _mom,_ ” he jokes.  
  
“Are you wearing the blue shirt?”  
  
“No, the grey,” he replies. “That’s okay, right?” He double-checks and he can almost hear Nat smiling through the phone.  
  
“Ooh the new one? Perfect. Let me guess, leather jacket and skinny jeans?”  
  
“Hey! It works!” James says, pretending to be offended, when really it’s just an indicator of how well Natasha knows him. He steps through yet another puddle and groans. His feet are practically sloshing in the water that’s already gotten into his nicest pair of shoes.  
  
“And listen, I’m sorry I’m late.” He says, apologetically, internally wincing for the tirade he expects to hear, but Nat sounds completely nonplussed. “Don’t worry,” she says, “your date’s late too.”  
  
“Okay, I’ll be there soon,” James says, “and I have some news!”  
  
“What? What is it? Come on spill,” Nat demands, before yelling in the background for her daughter not to practise her _archery skills in the kitchen_ _while mommy’s cooking_. James doesn’t comment on the fact that he had warned them against getting a four year old a bow and arrow for her birthday in the first place. That’s one I-told-you-so he’d much prefer to deliver in person.  
  
“Nat, I’ll literally be at your house in like fifteen minutes.”  
  
“James Buchana—”  
  
“Okay, okay! I got the attending position!” He says, giving in before Nat’s lecture has a chance to gather any kind of momentum. “I’m staying in New York!”  
  
“James that’s amazing!” Nat whoops, and Barnes hears ‘Tasha’s husband, Clint asking what’s going on on the other end of the phone. _“James got the attending position!”_ Nat explains, and James hears his second _woo-hoo_ of the evening.  
  
“I’ll get the champagne!” Clint shouts down the phone suddenly, having grabbed it from his wife’s hands momentarily, and Natasha’s laugh sounds more like a song to James’ ears.  
  
“Get over here already, I wanna hug you!” She says, clearly delighted and James shares in the sentiment wholeheartedly. He’s been working his ass off for years, and the attending position will let him stay in his family’s apartment in Brooklyn Heights, and close to Nat, and Clint and Kate. Maybe he’ll even hit it off with this blind date of his. Stranger things have happened.  
  
“I’ll see you soon.” He promises, staring at the steam from the orange and yellow pipes in the road as it floats up into the air. He watches as it hovers, as if it’s caught on thin air—plumes of the stuff floating aimlessly as it haunts the city street while Nat bids him goodbye, and the call clicks off.  
  
James goes to cross over to the subway stop, and he’s barely made if off the curb when he hears a horn blare suddenly. Brakes squeal and there’s a great screeching of tyres on the wet tarmac.  
  
Time slows, but the taxi doesn’t, and the last thing James sees before he’s hit is the awful, piercing, bright white light of the taxi’s headlights, blinding him. Then the car is slamming into him, propelling his body into the air, before gravity brings him back down with a terrible _thud_.  
  
His phone skitters out of his lifeless palm, and the newspaper that once was his makeshift umbrella is now plastered against the broken windscreen of the cab. The rain keeps falling, and water mixes with blood on the asphalt, as it swirls away from him towards the gutters.  
  
He tries to speak, he tries to move, but he can’t, _he can’t_. He hears footsteps, people running, and shouting, but everything’s warbled, and he’s never felt pain like this in his whole life. He wonders if this was how his mother felt in the accident, or his father, or his sister.  
  
He tries to take a breath, but his chest is too tight, and his head is screaming and panic starts clawing at his throat at an alarming rate.  
  
Thankfully, it doesn’t last long.  
  
The world dims, and a great darkness creeps in from either side of his vision until it envelops him whole, and James knows no more.

 

.

.

 

**During.**

 

.

.

 

“This is heaven,” Steve’s estate agent says, sighing dreamily as he steps into what Steve assumes must be the living room.  They’ve been looking at apartments in Williamsburg for the last three hours and he’s definitely starting to understand what people mean when they say that it’s hipster central. The last apartment they saw was stupidly oversized, with a couch that didn’t make sense and a pool table instead of a dining area, and now Steve’s agent is gushing over yet another apartment, while Steve struggles to see the appeal.  
  
“You know it’s been photographed for magazines?” The agent continues over-excitedly. “Very feng-shui. Danny Rand reportedly stayed here before his year-long trip to Tibet.”  
  
“Uh, Danny Rand?” Steve asks, sheepishly.  
  
“You know Danny Rand! He’s always on Oprah—”  
  
“Right.” Steve says, losing interest and nodding as if he has any idea what his agent’s talking about. Steve just wants to leave, he’s tired and running on fumes, but he can’t face another day of this, so he needs to get it done today. He has to find an apartment, even if it kills him.  “Listen, Mr. Coulson—”  
  
“Please, call me Phil,” the agent says, waving his hand in the air. “We’re practically friends!”  
  
Steve wonders if that’s a subtle dig at at just how many apartment’s he’s said no to and just how long they’ve been at this.  
  
“Besides, you don’t hear me calling you _Mr. Rogers._ ” Coulson laughs.  
  
“Right, _Phil,_ okay, I thought I said I’d need somewhere that was furnished?”  
  
“Well, it is furnished!” Phil replies, gesturing to the space around them as if he’s staring at something that Steve just can’t see.  
  
While, it’s true that Steve has been deployed and out of the country and hasn’t needed to search for an apartment in several years, he knows what furnished means, and this? This is not furnished. There’s a _sandpit_ in the lounge for crying out loud. It even comes with its own oversized rake, and while that may be relaxing for some, it’s not really Steve’s style.  
  
There’s a handful of pillows arranged nearby that sit on top of the bare floorboards, and there’s a tapestry on the wall with some kind of astrological significance. The whole place smells of incense and patchouli oil, and even though Steve loves how much light is coming in through the windows, he’d much prefer a place with curtains. And a couch. He really wants a couch. He’d even settle for the lumpy kind, like the one in Sam’s living room, where he’s been crashing for the last six months since getting out of the Army.    
  
“I’m not sure it’s right for me.” Steve says, politely, making to leave. Coulson trails behind him, with his mouth opening and closing like a goldfish. Clearly the agent had been expecting a different outcome.  
  
The two apartments in Greenpoint and Red Hook are a bust, and Park Slope’s pretty enough but it still doesn’t feel right. They end up looking at a ridiculous ostentatious place in Cobble Hill, and Steve is starting to think he was being a little hasty to have dismissed the unfurnished feng-shui-mess from earlier so soon.  
  
“I know.” Coulson says, having mistaken Steve’s slack-jawed distaste for awe. “This place isn't usually available, but the owner is spending all of his time in Latveria now.”  
  
There’s a portrait of a man looming over them above the ornate fireplace. He’s holding a skull in one hand, and the other is curled into a fist, held close to his chest. He’s wearing robes, with an upturned collar, and a jaunty hat, and Steve knows somewhat instinctively that the ridiculously oversized oil painting is the owner. He’s obviously gone to a lot of trouble to have a faux-renaissance painting done of himself, but from the colour alone it’s clear that the work was done _this_ century. Who knew his degree in Art-History would be so useful, he thinks, while trying not to wince at the rest of the decor.  
  
“Impressive, right?” Coulson says, trying to draw a response from the still-silent Steve.  
  
“Not quite the word I’d use.” Steve says diplomatically instead, looking away from the three fake-marble statues of greek gods, and frowning at the overgrown ivy that’s covering every window in the room. He undoes another button on his shirt collar, and tries not to focus on how warm the room is, how stuffy. He can almost taste the mothballs, crawling down the back of his throat, gagging him, choking him. _Fuck. It’s happening again.  
  
_ “I need some air.” He announces suddenly, before pushing his way out of the apartment and down the steps of the brownstone.  
  
He balls his hands into fists to stop the shaking, and takes a long deep breath, in through his nose, out through his mouth. He looks up at the blue sky that stretches up above the high rise buildings, _I’m not trapped, I’m not trapped_ , he thinks desperately as he tries to remember how to breathe. _I’m in Brooklyn. I’m looking for an apartment. My name is Steve Rogers. I’m not there. I’m not there.  
  
_ He hears Coulson’s voice behind him, talking into his phone. “No luck,” the agent says to what Steve assumes is his colleague on the other end. “It’s like _goldilocks and the three bears_. Push back my three o’clock. Actually, just go ahead and cancel the rest of my day. Yes, yes I know. Okay. Great. Thank you, Mack.”  
  
Coulson hangs up, and Steve figures he must be Goldilocks in the scenario, though he knows his own short-tempered attitude is veering closer to that of the three bears. He’s just...he’s _tired._ He’s tired of this, of all of this. He wants to go back to Sam’s, flop onto the couch and give up. He hasn’t slept in days, hell, he hasn’t really slept uninterrupted by nightmares for months, and it feels like he’s constantly on the edge. Frayed, and unravelling at the seams.  
  
Traipsing around New York and Brooklyn with his estate agent isn’t helping. He keeps seeing snapshots of other people’s lives, of _civilians_ , and he’s trying to insert himself into it—into the real world, but he just doesn’t fit. He thought he could slip back into it, but if the world is one big puzzle, then Steve’s piece is jagged, and his edges are too worn. He doesn’t fit anywhere, and everywhere he looks he sees people living out their lives while everything Steve does just reminds him that he’s alive while others aren’t—  
  
_Stop it, Steve.  
  
_ Sam says he’s spiralling. But Sam also knows better than to push.  
  
It’s been worse lately, ever since he bumped into Ann Raymond in the street, the widow of one of the guys in his unit. One of the men that didn’t make it back. That Steve left behind.  
  
She still blames Steve for Toro’s death, and he thought she’d been angry at the funeral but this? This was cold fury, and seeing her husband’s unit commander at the grocery store was more than she could take.  
  
Coulson starts to speak, so Steve pastes on a smile, and slips on the mask of a well adjusted soldier returning from the front. It’s a role he knows well. He tries to forget the insults from a still-grieving widow currently circling around his mind, but it’s hard. It doesn’t help that he thinks he deserves them all.  
  
“Steve, I'm just not quite sure what you're looking for.” Phil says, and he even sounds a little hopeless, so that doesn’t bode well. “Maybe if we could communicate a little more? Maybe if you could let me know a bit more about what's going on with you, with your job, your family situation?”  
  
Steve doesn’t say anything. He won’t talk to a shrink, he barely talks to Sam—his best friend, who he currently _lives with_ —so he sure as hell isn’t going to bear his soul to an overly-friendly estate agent who seems determined to show off the gaudiest of places when it comes to apartments in the five boroughs.  
  
“I don’t—”  
  
“Or how about we look at Manhattan again? I have some contacts in Hell’s Kitchen who have some great spaces you could look at.”  
  
“I’m not sure that’s—"  
  
“No, you’re right, there’s no vigilante’s in Brooklyn,” and Steve quirks his eyebrow at that comment. “Or here's an idea,” Phil continues, “stop looking for a couple of months. Start again.”  
  
Steve shudders at that possibility. Regardless of how much he would happily throw in the towel at this point, he has to find somewhere. He can’t keep encroaching on Sam’s life, he can’t be a burden, he can’t _fail_ —he has to find somewhere, he just needs a _sign_ .  
  
“You've gotta know where you wanna _live_ .” Coulson says, just as a gust of wind whips by on an otherwise clear, and perfect day. A piece of stray trash catches on Steve’s leg and he swipes it away. _Living’s part of the problem_ , he thinks darkly in response to Coulson’s words.  
  
The trash, which is in fact a lone pink flyer, floats into the air for a moment, before swooping back down to land on Steve’s arm. He bats it away, as he tries to listen to Coulson’s nattering.  
  
“I'm not really getting what it is you want, I feel like we’re not really connecting—”  
  
The piece of paper flies down towards Steve again for a third time, and it lands smack against his face. Growling in irritation, he pulls it back only to see an address listed there, followed by a local number.

 

SUBLET  
AVAILABLE FOR RENT  
Furn., 2+1, HrdwdFlrs, Frplc,  
W/D, A.C., ELV., GRT VU, Roof Access

 

Well, he did _ask_ for a sign.  
  
“Uh, Steve?” Coulson calls after him, as he crosses the road determinedly, and heads down the block. “Steve, wait, hey—Are you kidding?” Coulson asks, a little out of breath from jogging after Steve, when he finally gets a look at the piece of paper in Steve’s hands.  
  
He reads off the address and looks up at the building they’re standing in front of. “Listen, Steve, a place like this is long gone by now. There’s bound to be ninety vultures headed for this one carcass, there is literally no way this is still on the market.”  
  
Steve doesn’t answer, he just heads up the steps and straight for the front door, ringing the buzzer for the super, and waiting patiently. There’s a bakery on the corner, and the fresh smell of freshly baked pastries is in the air. The wind has died down to a faint breeze, and the trees that line the block are swaying calmly, casting their lilting shadows onto the red and brown brick of the apartment building.  
  
Coulson sighs as he gives in and grabs his phone from out of his pocket.  
  
“Alright, _fine_ , I’ll call them.”

 

***

 

 

“It’s pretty obvious why this place is still available,” Coulson starts explaining, hanging up the phone as soon as they cross the threshold into the apartment. Steve nods his thanks to the building’s super as he takes a look around, and Coulson pockets his cell. “There’s no one-year lease, it’s just a month-to-month sublet.”  
  
“How come?” Steve asks.  
  
“They didn’t like to say, some family matter—but would you look at that view.” Coulson replies, as he steps closer to the windows to admire the surrounding apartment buildings of Brooklyn Heights. Steve takes a look around. The place is clean, and well furnished. There’s plenty of light coming in through the windows so it would be great for painting, assuming he ever manages to pick up a paintbrush again.  
  
In the middle of the space between the kitchen and the couch, there’s a decent sized dining table in the centre, with four matching chairs placed around it. Steve wonders if a family lived here once, there’s certainly the space for it.  
  
The corridor by the front door is lined with walls of exposed brick, and it leads to the bedrooms that are towards the back, next to the bathroom. The kitchen is part of an open plan lounge at the front of the apartment, with a view overlooking the street. Steve steps closer and looks out of the window. He stares down below at the trees that line the road—at their roots bursting out from underneath the cement of the sidewalk, breaking from their moorings and creating hills and ridges on the ground next to the asphalt. Their branches don’t reach as far as the window, but Steve can see their falling leaves rustling in the light breeze.  
  
“These apartments tend to stay in families, so I’m surprised it’s being rented out at all.” Coulson says, but his musings fall on deaf ears while Steve is quickly drawn to the shaft of light that’s pouring through the doorway up ahead and into the hall. Tiny specks of dust float in the sunbeams, glittering, and drawing him closer. Steve expects to see another room, with huge bay windows to let in so much light, but instead he sees a stairwell, and the brilliant blue sky through an open door with access to the roof.  
  
_Holy shit.  
  
_ “Steve?” Coulson calls, rounding the corner. Steve ignores him and follows the path up to the light. His feet crunch on scattered gravel, but it’s the view that has him stumped.  
  
“Steve, what— _oh wow_.”  
  
And it leaves his estate agent lost for words as well.  
  
There’s a clear view of the Manhattan skyline just ahead of them. The freedom tower shines in the reflection of the low hanging sun, casting a golden glow over the adjacent buildings. The buildings next door, with their water towers and air conditioning units block the view of the river, but Steve can hear the faint horns of the ferries going by. The traffic is quiet, and the trains are too far away to be heard.  
  
The air is so clear up here away from the din, that Steve can feel himself breathing easily for the first time in months. It’s like an escape. It’s like paradise.  
  
At the very edge of the roof Steve sees a huge blue tarp, and he ignores Coulson’s exclamations of _“Isn’t this fascinating?”_ to instead grab hold of the tarp and pull it down. He finds a small blank wall hiding behind it.  
  
It doesn’t obscure the breathtaking view by any means—the giants of Manhattan are far too tall for that—but it draws Steve’s eye all the same. He can’t help but think it’s a shame that this blank canvas: old wood over red brick, is being wasted in its environment.  
  
At first he thinks it might be a remnant of another building next door, long since rebuilt, or maybe it was once custom-built for privacy, as part of a bigger fenced off section. Maybe it’s all that remains of a whole story above them that was removed.  
  
“That’s an old billboard stand.” Coulson says out of the blue, somehow reading Steve’s mind. “It looks old though, and they wouldn’t normally have used brick. Probably advertised _Camel cigarettes_ in the forties or something.”  
  
Steve figures the building across the way must block the board enough to not warrant any new advertisements, so the stand just sits there, abandoned, and unused.  
  
“They haven’t done much with it,” Coulson says gesturing to the rest of the roof. “But private access, and this view? Isn't this gorgeous?”  
  
Steve agrees, but he doesn’t say anything, and instead he heads back down into the living room, and lets himself sink deep into the red couch that’s facing the television. It’s soft, and comfortable. It feels cosy and new. It’s so different to the one at Sam’s place, and it’s nothing like the one he had at home, or anything that he sat on overseas—but that’s a good thing.  
  
He doesn’t have any bad memories here. He doesn’t have a chain that’s gonna pull him under when he least expects it. It’s new to him, it’s a fresh start. He looks around the apartment again. _No ghosts here_ , he thinks.  
  
“I’ll take it.” He says, and Coulson breathes a loud and very obvious sigh of relief.

 

 

***

 

 

Steve barely has any stuff to move in, having downsized repeatedly over the years, and he declines Sam’s offer of help as unnecessary. He manages to get what little he owns over to his new place in just two trips, hauling everything over to Brooklyn in one backpack, and two big gym bags.  
  
Once he’s settled, he keeps the TV on at a low volume, orders pizza, and paws off his shoes—letting them fly in opposite directions across the living room. He sits, and stews for hours in his own thoughts, breaking only to answer the door, pay the delivery boy, and sit back down again.  
  
He makes it through one beer after another, until soon he’s surrounded by empty bottles and a half-empty pizza box. The lethargy that follows being as drunk as he is starts dragging him under, and he can feel himself nodding off, his eyes start to close and he can’t tell if the lights are flickering or if it’s just his vision going in and out, but just as he’s about to fall asleep the stereo in the kitchen bursts into life.  
  
Steve jumps at the noise.  
  
There’s a crackling, like the sound is caught between stations until the signal finds its way and a man’s singing voice drifts through the apartment.  
  
_Out there, there’s a world outside of Yonkers, way out there beyond this hick-town Barnaby, there’s a slick town Barnaby-y-y-y!  
  
_ Steve stares, rushing to his feet and over to the kitchen.  
  
_….full of shine and full of sparkle….close your eyes and see....isten…. Nab...y...y...listen Ba….y-y-y  
  
_ “What the hell?” He mutters at the _Hello, Dolly_ show tune that’s currently swallowing up the silence that Steve had been enjoying previously. The signal stutters in between sudden bouts of white noise, with its shrill hissing, and Steve can’t work out how the thing switched itself on in the first place.  
  
He looks around the empty space, and then back down at the stereo, frowning.  
  
He flicks it off, and there’s a faint crackle and hum as the radio settles and stops. Steve shakes it off, and grabs a beer-can from the fridge, before padding back out towards the couch. _Must’ve been a power surge_ , he reasons as he goes to pop the tab open on the can’s lid.  
  
He looks up and there’s a man standing in his living room.  
  
Steve shouts in alarm, and the stranger does the same—both of them screaming at one another. The can of beer in Steve’s hand explodes, and beer foam shoots up into the air and drenches Steve’s shirt. It doesn’t leave a mark on the stranger.  
  
“What the hell?!” Steve shouts when the part of his brain responsible for cognitive thought registers that he lives _alone_. “Who the hell are you?”  
  
“Who the hell am I? Who the hell are _you?_ ” The stranger in Steve’s new apartment demands, looking pissed. He’s about the same height as Steve, but he doesn’t look as strong so Rogers figures he could take him if he needed to. Plus Steve’s wearing a pair of loose fitting joggers, so he’ll have a better freedom of movement than the black skinny jeans that this is intruder is wearing. The stranger won’t know what hit him— _you can’t just waltz into other people’s homes like that_ , Steve thinks. _Even if you do look like James Dean.  
  
_ “This is my apartment, so I’m asking the questions, pal.” Steve says, testily.  
  
“ _Your_ apartment? What the hell are you talking about. This is _my_ apartment.”  
  
“Oh yeah, since when?”  
  
“Since I rented it.” The stranger says obviously, and Steve gets the sinking feeling that he’s been duped.  
  
“Damn,” Steve grumbles at his own naïveté. Of course this place was too good to be true. He was stupid to have expected anything less. “I don’t need this. Rent scam, right?”  
  
“What are you talking about?”  
  
“Don’t you get it?” Steve says, getting more and more exasperated by the minute. He’ll have to call Coulson, and he’ll need to start looking again. _Shit._ Maybe he’ll go back to that place in Williamsburg, with the sandpit. He could probably find a couch on Craigslist for cheap. He can make do without the rest... “There's probably five other people who paid deposits and got the keys.”  
  
“And moved in all their things?”    
  
Steve doesn’t have an answer to that, so the stranger keeps going.  “This is my stuff. All of this. That's my couch, that's my coffee table—dude is that a ring?” The man sounds affronted as he peers closer to inspect the mark left behind from Steve’s cold beer. _Oops_. “Haven’t you ever heard of a coaster? Or a trash can, for that matter? Look at this place.” He says, gesturing to the pile of beer bottles and take-out boxes that are liberally scattered around the room.  
  
“Well I wasn’t exactly expecting company.” Steve mumbles half-heartedly, a little embarrassed at the state of the place. Sam wouldn’t have approved that’s for sure, but that’s one of the reasons he got his own apartment in the first place.  
  
“I don't care who you are, you're gonna clean this up!” The man says, gesturing to the alcohol that’s currently staining the wooden floorboards, before heading into the kitchen. “Stay there, I'm getting the bucket.”  
  
“Wait—” Steve starts to say, following the man into the kitchen while he mutters that Steve is a _filthy pig,_ “—You moved in when?”  
  
The kitchen is empty.  
  
“Hello?”  
  
There’s no one there.  
  
Weirdo must have given up, Steve thinks, rationally telling himself that the man must have left quietly while Steve was still trying to process the whole thing.  
  
He sees that the deadbolt on the front door isn’t locked, and that the chain on the door is a little loose, so it’s really no wonder that someone got in so easily. So what if the _James Dean_ wannabe was scammed out of his deposit. This is Steve’s apartment now, so the neurotic asshole in the skinny-jeans can find someone else to harass.  
  
He rummages through the box of stuff that he’d dragged from Sam’s place in Manhattan, and upon finding his toolbox, he tightens the locks, and makes sure the chain is fastened before he gets into the shower. There’s no way the guy could get back in, even if he did have his own key.  
  
In the shower, Steve lets the hot water scald his skin, relishing in the burn as it works to uncoil the tension in his back. His muscles shift a little, loosening slowly, as he begins to unwind. He doesn’t know how long he stays there, lost in his own head under the spray, but when the water starts to cool, and his body starts to shiver in the cold, he gets out.  
  
He wraps a towel around his waist as he dries off. He wipes at the condensation on the mirrored medicine cabinet, and nearly has a heart attack when he sees a figure standing, _glaring_.  
  
“Fuck!” He shouts in surprise to the see the stranger’s reflection standing right behind him.  
  
“I told you to get out!” The man screams and the lights flicker under the onslaught of his yell. Steve hears a distinctive crack and when he looks back at the mirror, the glass there is splintered, and Steve’s own reflection is broken and fragmented, but the stranger himself is gone.  
  
The pipes creak ominously in the walls, and Steve can hear the muffled sounds of the stereo in the kitchen changing stations again.  
  
“Nope.” He mutters to himself over and over again as he quickly dresses. This has the makings of a horror film written all over it, and Steve is woefully unprepared to deal with poltergeists in his own living room. He heads out of the apartment with his wallet, and his keys, and his hair still wet. He sends Sam a quick text with the location of where to meet and he slams the door shut behind him.  
  
So much for no ghosts.

 

***

 

 

“So not that I’m complaining,” Sam says, as the waitress in the diner they’re sat in fills up their cups with strong black coffee, “but what’s up? What was so urgent that we had to meet now, when you’ve been avoiding me all week?”  
  
“I’m not avoiding you,” Steve says, even though he has spent the last two weeks conveniently scheduling any apartment-viewings to coincide with Sam’s time off. “I just, I just needed to clear my head.”  
  
“And did you?”  
  
“Did I what?”  
  
“Clear your head.”  
  
“Not exactly.” Steve wonders how he should approach this. How best to confess that he’s currently being haunted, or slowly having a nervous breakdown.  “Listen, I’ve been seeing...someone, in my—”  
  
“You’re seeing someone? Steve that’s great!” Sam interjects, and Steve frowns.  
  
“You think this is a good thing?”  
  
“Of course! I mean the last time I tried to hook you up you completely bailed—and the time before that was a total bust—”  
  
“—Hey, don’t bring Sharon into this, she used a fake name! She told me she was a _nurse_ —”  
  
“—but the fact that you initiated this by yourself, that’s important, man.”  
  
Steve bites the bullet.  
  
“Sam, I’m seeing someone that isn’t _there_.”  
  
“So they’re emotionally unavailable?”  
  
Steve stares.  
  
“Oh,” Sam says, with a tone that betrays the sinking feeling they’re both currently experiencing. “You mean like a hallucination.”  
  
“Twice. In my apartment. Once in the living room, and then again in the bathroom. A man. Dark hair, maybe late twenties—” Steve says, as though he’s giving a report, prepared to recount any details to his fellow ex-serviceman if it means they can find a solution.  
  
“Hot?”  
  
“Seriously, Sam?”  
  
“Okay, I’m sorry. When did this happen?” Sam asks.  
  
“Just now. In the apartment, that’s why I messaged you.”  
  
Sam looks Steve up and down, his gaze lingering on Steve’s hands as they cradle the coffee cup. “Were you drinking?”  
  
“I might have had a few, but that’s not—”  
  
“Steve—”  
  
“It was a couple beers. that’s all. You know that shit barely even works on me.”  
  
“You say that like you’re some kind of superman, but I have seen you drunk man, and let me tell you—”  
  
“Okay, okay, I was drunk. But that doesn’t mean I should start seeing crazy guys running around my apartment yelling at me for not using a coaster!” Steve argues.  
  
“Did you recognise him?” Sam interjects.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Did you recognise him?” Sam asks again, but a little slower. “Is there any chance he’s one of the guys you lost in the desert?” Steve hates that expression. _Lost_ like they’re just misplaced and he’ll find them eventually. Like their bodies didn’t litter the roadside like discarded trash, to be swept up—  
  
“Steve, breathe.”  
  
And it’s only then that Steve realises that he’d stopped. He takes a breath, and then another, and another. There’s a small crack in the porcelain cup in his hands. Shit. He lets out another breath, a long one, and then in through his nose.  
  
“Where are you?” Sam asks.  
  
“Brooklyn, New York. It’s 22:00 hours. We’re in a diner. I’m drinking coffee.”  
  
_I’m not surrounded by the dead. I’m not screaming for help. I can’t taste the granules of sand between my teeth. No, sir.  
  
_ “Sorry.” Steve says finally when he has a better handle on every intake of breath, and Sam waves his hand just he always does.  
  
“No need Steve. You know better than anyone, there’s some stuff you leave behind, other stuff you bring back.”  
  
“This isn’t a group session Sam,” Steve says, a little sharply but his best friend takes it in his stride. He spends his whole day being patient, and controlled, and helping serve as an anchor for veterans lost at sea. He’s always been willing to do the same for Steve.  
  
“I know it’s not.” Sam says, careful to keep his voice measured. “Doesn’t make it any less true.”  
  
Steve sighs, and apologises again.  
  
“How’ve you been sleeping?” Sam asks, since Steve is always still awake when Sam turns in, and out running before Sam gets up.  
  
“No change.” Steve says in a rare bout of honesty.  
  
“Nightmares?”  
  
“No, well, _yes_ , but that’s not it. I just can’t shut off.” Steve admits, gesturing a finger to his head to emphasise that it’s his brain that needs to quiet down, and he knows Sam gets exactly what’s swimming around in there.  
  
“Have you done any physio? How’s your leg doing?”  
  
“It’s fine, Sam, this isn’t why I—”  
  
“I know, but it might be the only chance I’ll get. I’m not gonna say it wasn’t your fault,” Sam says a little out of the blue. “Because I’ve said it a thousand times and you don’t want to hear it—”  
  
“Sam—”  
  
“—But nobody blames you.”  
  
Steve scoffs.  
  
“What, you mean Ann? Toro’s girl? Come on, Steve, _you were there._ That’s _all._ I knew Toro, so did Riley, so did Rhodey and Wade. Hell, I think Carol even went to Ann’s bachelorette party. We weren’t in your unit, but we went to enough cook-outs for her to associate us with the army and what happened. If Ann had seen any one of us she would have let rip. The only difference is that you were in that grocery store that night, and we weren’t.”  
  
“You can’t—”  
  
“You think Toro would want you to do this? Or Hammond or any of the other guys for that matter? They loved you, they _respected_ you.” Sam stops, and lets his own words sink in. “Steve, you need to get out of your own head—”  
  
“And my apparently haunted apartment.” Steve says sardonically as he takes a sip of his cooling coffee that turns into more of a gulp as he tries to lighten the mood and steer it away from Sam’s logic.  
  
“My advice?” Sam says. “Lay off the beer, get some sleep, and when you’re ready, you can drop in at the VA—”  
  
“Sam—”  
  
“You were doing so well, you were doing commissions again, but you’re spiralling and you know it. You need to take care of yourself. You don’t have to be a martyr, you don’t have to punish yourself.”  
  
“And if sleep doesn’t work?”  
  
“Then we’ll look into some other options.”  
  
“Like ghostbusters?”  
  
“I was thinking along the lines of some therapy sessions, but sure, we’ll call Father Flanagan to bless the joint if you think that’ll help.”  
  
Steve knows Sam’s joking, but maybe an exorcist isn’t such a bad idea.  
  
He’ll keep it in mind.

 

***

 

 

Sam seems content in thinking that the ghost is a manifestation of Steve’s alcohol consumption, his latent PTSD, and his lack of sleep. _Maybe he’s right_ , Steve thinks. He hasn’t actually managed to sleep more than three hours uninterrupted since he got out of the Army six months ago.  
  
So it’s decided then. Steve’s first challenge is to sleep, perchance to _not be haunted by some greaser with a cleaning-streak_.  
  
As soon as he arrives back at his apartment that night, Steve checks every window and door to make sure they’re locked. He sweeps the whole floor, checks the perimeter and when his anxiety is moderately satisfied that he is most certainly alone, he heads into bed.  
  
His head has just hit the pillow, when a surprisingly shrill, pissed off voice says, “You have got to be kidding me! What the hell are you doing?”  
  
Steve’s response is to grab a hold of his pillow and wrap it around his head, blocking out his ears, and more importantly, the sound of the damned ghost.  
  
“Dude I have been downright _delightful_ about this shit, all things considered, but if you don’t leave in the next five minutes, I’m calling the cops!”  
  
“I’m sleeping.” Steve says, like a mantra, over and over again. “I’m sleeping and this is a dream, it’s a fucked up dream, where you know you’re dreaming and you’re not real and I am _asleep_.”  
  
“How do you keep getting in here?” The ghost asks, incredulously.  
  
“It’s you who’s in here!” Steve shouts, pointing to his head, as if daring the manifestation to deny it.  
  
“Oh,” the spirit-hallucination-mindfuckery-in-skinny-jeans says as he steps closer, even appearing to perch on the end of the bed. “This is more serious than I thought.”  
  
“Go away, you don’t exist.” Steve says, a little miserably, smushing his face into the bedsheets.  
  
“I’m gonna ask you a series of questions, and I want you to answer honestly.” The stranger says, as though he’s trying to diagnose Steve, who sits up a little straighter as a result. “Has your recent alcohol consumption increased?”  
  
“….yes…?” Steve responds warily, wondering if he should be engaging his own hallucination as much as he is.  
  
“Are you hearing voices? Seeing things that aren’t quite real?”  
  
“As a matter of fact, yeah, I am!” Steve says, almost laughing at the absurdity of it all.  
  
“Have you recently been to see a mental health care professional?”  
  
He wonders if Sam counts, but the ghost is edging closer now, and so Steve is scooting backwards on the bed, until his back is pressed up against the frame. “Stay away from me.” He says, remembering how volatile the ghost got in the bathroom when it—he?—had first screamed at Steve to leave.  
  
“Do you often feel paranoid? Like people are out to get you?”  
  
“Why are you asking so many questions?” Steve asks, annoyed. If this was any kind of normal horror film, he’d be dead by now.  
  
“Well, that’s a yes.” The spirit says, but strangely enough he sounds kind. “Look, you’ve fantasised that this is your home, okay? But it belongs to someone else. To me. That’s my chair,” the spirit says pointing, “and this is my bed, and that’s my picture—wait, where’s my picture?”  
  
The spirit sounds annoyed again, _shit, here we go.  
  
_ “Where is it? Where’s my picture?” He asks again.  
  
“That table was empty when I moved in.”  
  
“No, there was a picture of…” The spirit falters, frowning as if he’s forgotten something. “Of... _never mind_ , there was a picture!”  
  
“I don’t—”  
  
“Okay you know what, that’s it, I’m calling the cops!” The stranger shouts, and Steve has no idea what the hell’s going on anymore, but he definitely doesn’t want to add law enforcement into the mix.  
  
“No, wait, we can—”  
  
But the stranger, no the _spirit_ , his hand glides straight through the phone, and the panicked look on his face tells Steve that the ghost clearly hadn’t expected that to happen. He tries again, reaching for the object, but his translucent grip is useless.  
  
“What is this?” He asks, in a panic, unable to grab a hold of anything. “What did you do to the phone?” He yells, in Steve’s direction this time, and it’s happening again. The air is getting colder. Steve’s breath is fogging out in front of him, hanging listlessly in the air, and the ghosts eyes are a dark, dark blue. Stormy, and pissed as hell.  
  
“What’s happening?” The ghost asks, in what Steve thinks might be fear, as he runs off into the rest of the apartment, taking the frigid cold air with him.  
  
Steve goes to follow, but just like before, there’s no one there.  
  
_There’s no way I’m sleeping now_ , Steve thinks to himself, still shivering from the encounter. He reaches for his old navy hoodie with his quarterback position in high school emblazoned on the back, and grabs his laptop from off of the floor.  
  
“Let’s see what the ghost wants.” He mutters to himself.

 

***

 

 _Ghost, New York_ (About 49,800,000 results)

 _Ghost, Brooklyn, New York_ (About 777,000 results)

 _Ghost, New York,  Brooklyn, Haunted apartment_ (About 441,000 results )

 _Ghosts, New York, Brooklyn, Haunted apartment, how do gjhskjskjlldgldglknfgngknjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj—  
  
_ Steve wakes up with his face leaning against the warm keyboard of his computer. A quick look at the screen tells him he’s been asleep for three hours, and he’s no closer to solving the mystery of his ghostly new roommate than he was last night.  
  
He doesn’t want to think about the nightmarish stories he read about online. Staying up ‘til dawn looking up the ins and outs of the _Amityville_ haunting because he fell into an internet hole and struggled to get back out again, is not one of his finest moments.  
  
He did find out that Yoko Ono reportedly saw John Lennon sitting at the piano in the Dakota once, and that doesn’t seem so bad.  
  
Outside, it’s a grey day, and the sheer amount of fog hovering at street level and beyond has kept the sunrise from view. The clock reads 08:35 and now that it’s finally a decent enough hour, Steve gets dressed, grabs his keys, and dials Coulson’s number on his way out of the apartment.  
  
Sam might think this ghost is just a result of Steve’s desperately tired mind, but if last night’s encounter is anything to go by, then Steve’s apartment is definitely haunted. After all, why would he dream up a ghost, who doesn’t even know he’s a ghost?  
  
“Phil?” Steve says as the call connects, and his apartment door closes with a quiet click. “Hey,  it’s Steve…Steve Rogers? I was wondering if you had the number of the people subletting the apartment?”  
  
“Why?” Phil asks abruptly, suddenly very invested in the conversation. “Is there something wrong? ‘Cause I can be there in like ten minutes to help you out—” Steve can hear the clacking of keys on the keyboard, and he figures Coulson’s looking up the quickest route off the island.  
  
“No, no, nothing’s wrong, I was just wondering about the previous tenant—”  
  
“Oh,” Phil says, sounding a little more relaxed, but definitely disappointed. “Well, the woman I spoke to wouldn’t really say anything, _at all,_ but when I called back to confirm, a man answered and mentioned a tragedy in the family. I didn’t want to ask any questions.”  
  
“So…the guy who lived there before me, do you think he died?” Steve wonders aloud, and he can almost feel a slight twinge in his chest, almost like grief, which is ridiculous because if his ghost is anything to go by, then this guy was kind of a dick.  
  
But he’s young. Or at least he was. He barely looked a day older than Steve himself. That is, if Steve shaved, or washed his hair, or made any kind of effort to look a little less haggard. And he’d been dressed up nice too, like he’d been going somewhere. Like he had a life. Which is more than Steve can say for himself right now.  
  
“Well you better hope he’s dead,” Coulson interrupts, a little distractedly, clearly not realising that he’s coming across as overly callous. “That’s the only chance you have of getting a full lease.”  
  
“That’s not exactly why I was—”  
  
“Oh _come on,_ Steve, it has a view, it has a fireplace, exposed brick, roof access, people would kill their grandmothers for a lot less in this city!”  
  
Steve hangs up.

 

***

 

He’s been wandering around Brooklyn for less than an hour when he finds it. He looks at the location pin on the map on his phone, and then up at the store window. The sign reads _“Asgard”_ in large letters, and below in a cursive kind of type it says: “ _The rainbow bridge is closer than you think!”  
  
_ Steve doesn’t know what a rainbow bridge is, and he’s pretty sure Asgard has something to do with Norse mythology, so he thinks he must be in the right place. _Yelp_ seems to think this is _the_ place for “occult and metaphysical,”, and if he’s lucky, maybe they’ll be doing a deal on exorcisms.  
  
Forcing himself to go in, and fighting the urge to roll his eyes, Steve crosses the threshold. He steps out off of the street, and into the incensed-filled bookstore. There’s a display stand near the entrance with books about Angels, boasting 30% off retail price, and the young woman at the desk is chewing bubblegum while making notes on a huge pad of paper that’s resting on top of an Astrophysics textbook. When she turns the page, Steve can see a whole row of maths equations that have been annotated with red ink.  
  
He looks back at the rows of books, and he finds himself looking at a subsection labelled _spiritual trail_ . He’s hoping that there’s instructions on how to avoid said path, or how to find your way back to the goddamn road. He’s never felt so out of his depth in a bookstore before, and he’s muttering under his breath, trying to make sense of _anything_ , when a large presence appears at his side.  
  
“Can I help you?” A man asks, as he inserts himself into Steve’s personal space and Steve tries his best not to flinch—he’s had enough of people sneaking up on him lately.  
  
The man in question is _huge_. His blond hair is long and scraggly, and Steve can see a dread or two hanging singularly amongst the other strands of hair. He’s unshaven, but his beard is finely trimmed, and he’s wearing a check shirt under a huge baggy cardigan. His eyes have a glazed look about them behind his gold wire framed glasses, that Steve doubts is a result of the patchouli he can smell, and more likely to be thanks to something much stronger.  
  
“Dude? _Can.I.help.you?_ ” The guy repeats. He’s still being polite, but he’s talking slower this time, and Steve realises he’d been staring at his Adonis-like figure for a little too long. He’s just so tall, and broad shouldered, much like Steve, and he seems to command a presence just by standing there. Steve realises he’s slouching and he stands up straight.  
  
“No! No, I’m—I’m fine, I was just—” and the fight goes out of him with a sigh. “Do you believe in this stuff?” He asks instead, lowering his voice somewhat. The physicist-in-waiting at the desk still smirks at him all the same.  
  
“Well you _don’t_ ,” the man says, “until you _do_.”  
  
Steve stares.  
  
“That’s kinda dated—” the man says pointing to the random book that Steve had grabbed off of the shelf. “I’d recommend the Dr. Selvig approach, it’s totally seminal.” He hands over another book, and on the back of the dust-jacket there’s a black and white portrait of a middle-aged man sat outside in a garden. He’s looking off into the distance, and he has his glasses in his hands, tipped towards his chin, as if lost in thought.  
  
“Excuse me,” a young man with jet-black hair hanging over his face interrupts them, and asks about a book in the UFO section, but the blonde man helping Steve just waves him away towards the back. When the other customer is clear, he turns back to Steve conspiratorially.  
  
“ _Ufology,_ ” he scoffs, rolling his eyes. “It’s not even a real science. Guy’s convinced an alien race called the Chitauri are gonna descend on New York. _Total_ buzzkill. He’s also my “brother” but whatever.” He says, using air quotes to describe their relationship, before leaning back against the stalls, and grinning widely. “So what kind of encounter have you had?” He asks.  
  
“Uh….encounter?” Steve looks over his shoulder again half expecting his entire high school gym class to be watching him, or at the very least, _Sam_.  
  
“Ectoplasm? Soniferous ether? I have a killer sêance book if you're into communication, I wrote it under a pseudonym, so don’t tell anyone I told you.” He says, pointing to a book by a _Dr. Donald Blake.  
  
_ “Thank you, but, uh communication is not _his_ problem.”  
  
“Righteous.” The shopkeeper—who apparently sometimes goes by _Donald Blake_ —says, catching Steve’s drift.  “I have exactly what you need,” he says before grabbing half the shelf and dumping the books into Steve’s arms. Blake closes his eyes, lets his fingers dance across the spines, before taking a look and cursing at his blind selection. He picks up another book, puts his palm on the cover, _honest to god hums_ for a moment before adding the book to the pile.  
  
“Hey Darcy!” He shouts over to the counter.  
  
“Don’t yell at me, Thor!” The girl shouts back, having now discarded her gum. “Or I’ll stop delivering your stupid love-letters to my professor!”  
  
Thor growls, but clearly lowers his voice to agree to her terms. “Give this guy the _first encounter_ discount, okay?”  
  
The rest of the shop’s inhabitants turn to stare, while Darcy practically leers at him. Steve isn’t one to blush, but he’s pretty sure he’s going supernova right now.  
  
“Until next time—” Blake—or rather, Thor—says, his voice booming, and his words hanging in the air as he waits for Steve to introduce himself.  
  
“Oh! Steve, I’m Steve Rogers,” he says, before it even occurs to him to give a fake name. He’s gonna end up on some kind of list somewhere, he’s sure of it.  
  
“Until next time, Steve!” Thor yells, smacking Steve on the back so hard that he drops at least three of the books he’s been given. Thor chuckles good naturedly and Steve wonders when the hell did his life turn into such a goddamn circus.  
  
“I’ll take that too.” Steve says, spotting the discounted ouija board when he gets to the counter. He fishes out a load of bills from his pants pocket and high-tails it outta there.  
  
On the subway, Steve watches the innards of the New York City subway system rushing past, dark and bleak and interspaced with sudden lights and flashes as they go by.  
  
The woman sitting across from him laughs into her phone. Her nails are long and sharp and painted a deep purple. Her fingers curl in her lap, ruffling the material of her skirt. “Oh yeah?” She teases into her _cell_. “I bet you do.” She says, intimately and Steve tries not to listen. He can’t remember the last time he heard someone talk like that to him. Sharon, whatever her name was, she was nice. She was upbeat, and pretty, and smart, but the spark wasn’t there, and Steve can readily admit that he didn’t try too hard on his end to create one either. The last guy Sam had tried to set him up with might’ve been nice too, but Steve had gotten scared and bailed.  
  
He’d gotten close. He’d made it as far as the subway before the panic had started to set in, and it was when he was on his way back home that he’d gone to the grocery store. He was in the aisle for potato chips when Ann Raymond had seen him. She’d dropped her basket to the floor, and the clatter had made him flinch—but it was the only warning he’d gotten before she’d started hissing in his face. _Your fault_ , she’d said in a teary-rage. _All your goddamn fault_.  
  
“I miss you,” Steve hears the woman across from him say, quietly then, to whomever is on the other end of her call. She’s biting her lip as she waits for the response. When she hangs up, she shares a look with Steve, their eyes meet, and Steve’s throat goes dry. She looks...raw for a second, and it makes Steve yearn for contact in his own life so desperately that he ends up hugging the ouija board box a little closer to his chest.  
  
“Can I help you?” The stranger asks in the subway car, and Steve looks away, glad that the next stop will be his.

 

 

***

 

 

He tries the ouija board first. With his fingers loosely placed on the pointer, he waits patiently, and when it starts to move he follows it all around the board until the ghost spells out _F — U — C — K — O — F — F_  so Steve lets go with a sigh.  
  
“Not helpful!” He yells to thin air. The only response he gets is the ominous creaking of the pipes in the walls, and the now predictable static of the stereo in the kitchen.  
  
Steve moves the board out of the way and starts flicking through one of the many books he left the store with instead. He grabs a handful of candles and starts lighting them around the window seat where he’s created a kind of nest of books dedicated to dealing with and _encouraging_ ghostly encounters.  
  
“ _‘Spirit awake_ ,’” he reads aloud, feeling foolish, and waving the candle in air with the motion described in the book. “‘ _Spirit partake! Spirit without fear, spirit appear!_ ’”  
  
Nothing happens, but Steve knows he’s not alone. Even if the ouija board hadn’t been enough to convince him, the room is definitely colder than it was earlier, and the hairs on the back of his neck are standing on end.  
  
“I know you’re here.” Steve says. “Come on, I’m trying to be reasonable.”  
  
Still nothing. Steve looks down at the book again before closing it completely. Time to play hard-ball.  
  
“Okay, I have a hot, moist cup of coffee in my hand, and I do not have a coaster. This mug is going down. It is touching the lovely mahogany tabl—”  
  
“Don’t you dare!” The ghost yells, suddenly appearing in front of Steve as though he had always been there. He looks completely unchanged to the last time he was present. Same leather jacket, same skinny jeans, same _glare_ , same everything.  
  
“Hi.” Steve says politely. “I think we need to talk.”  
  
“About what?” The ghost asks, his expression guarded.  
  
“Has it occurred to you that something seems a little…. _off_ about the way you've been spending your days?”  
  
“Actually, yes,” says the ghost. “You know it’s a little strange to have a squatter in _your living room_!”  
  
“I am not— _okay_ , no, I’m not doing this again. Let's start over.” Steve says, brushing his sweaty palms onto his pants and standing up as if to shake the ghosts hand. “Hi,” he says. “I’m Steve Rogers, and you are?"  
  
“I’m…” but the ghost doesn’t finish, and the same panicked look he had when he couldn’t grab the phone last night is back with a vengeance. “I am…”  
  
He turns around in confusion, and then after staring towards the kitchen, he suddenly says, “Buchanan! My name’s Buchanan.”  
  
Steve frowns, and following the direction in which the ghost had been looking, he sees faded pencil marks written in the doorway that he hadn’t noticed before. There are small lines on the frame that had clearly marked the trajectory of a child’s height over time. The rest of the names are illegible, smudged and worn. It looks as though there might have been writing before and after that name, but now Buchanan is all that anyone’s eye can make out.  
  
“You didn’t know that,” Steve accuses lightly. “You had to read that.”  
  
“I think I know my own name.” The ghost scoffs, and Steve can see right through him.  
  
“When was the last time you remember actually talking to someone other than me?”  
  
“The other day.” The ghost fumbles as he tries to remain confident. “The other day.” He repeats, as if trying to convince himself more so than Steve.  
  
“And when you're not here, what do you do with the rest of your day?” Steve presses.  
  
“Certainly a lot more than you do, that's for sure.” The ghost says, getting nasty—and that’s how Steve knows he’s on the right track. “I only count one bottle, what is it, slow beer day?”  
  
“Let's not stray from the point, _Bucky_ —”  
  
“Don't call me Bucky, I’m not a _dog_. My name’s Buchanan.”  
  
“So you think! Besides, I’m not calling you that, so you better get used to Bucky, or I’m gonna go with Casper.”  
  
Bucky glares, so Steve figures he’s at least on the right track. “Has anything dramatic happened to you recently?” He asks, stalking closer to the spirit now, so much so that Bucky’s backing away.  
  
“Like what?” Bucky asks.  
  
“Oh I don’t know,” Steve says pretending to shrug, “like _dying_ maybe?”  
  
Bucky looks affronted now, and his mouth opens and closes like a perplexed goldfish.  
  
“How dare you?” The ghosts says then, and when Steve reaches out with a comforting gesture, Bucky mistakes it for an attack.  
  
“Get away from me!” He yells, backing up further.  
  
“Okay, calm down, I don’t want to hurt you, I’m just trying to help you see the fact that you’re—”  
  
“I’m not dead, asshole!” Bucky shouts, but Steve won’t be deterred.  
  
“Look around you, there should be a bright light. Walk into the light, Bucky!”  
  
“Stop calling me that! There is no light, and I am not dead! I think I would know if I was dead!” Bucky shouts as he continues to back away from Steve’s advances. Unbeknownst to the spirit he has stepped back and _through_ the dining room table, which he is currently standing in the centre of, completely lacking a corporeal form.  
  
“What the hell?” Bucky whispers desperately when he looks down to see that he’s passed directly through the table. “What’s happening to me?”  
  
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, you’re dead.” Steve says, a little softer now.  
  
“I’m not dead, stop saying that!” Bucky yells, suddenly angry once more, as he lunges at Steve, but only manages to pass through him instead. It can’t last for more than a second, but in that moment, Steve’s skin turns to ice. He hears the screeching of brakes, and he feels a sharp pain... _everywhere_ , radiating off of him in waves. He gasps, and Bucky’s spirit makes it to the other side of Steve’s body, through the window, and out into the night. The pain follows him out and Steve can’t help but wonder if that’s how the guy feels all the time.  
  
“Rest in peace.” Steve says genuinely to the dark street below.  
  
“I'm not leaving.” Bucky says from behind, standing in the living room once more, as though he hadn’t just taken a trip outside at all.  
  
“Well neither am I!” Steve shouts back, stubbornly, and it’s the weirdest stalemate he’s ever found himself in.

 

 

***

 

 

At first Steve tries to ignore the problem. He’s had roommates before, and getting on with everyone all of the time is impossible, so when Bucky sits inside of the fridge, and comments on every single goddamn thing that Steve gets out of there, Steve doesn’t say a word.  
  
“Another beer?” Bucky says, in a dull tone. “My, my.” He tuts.  
  
And when Steve decides to try and watch the football game on TV, and Bucky sings along with the stereo instead, loudly interrupting the commentators, Steve ignores it.  
  
When the lights flicker on and off, Steve ignores it, and when Bucky decides to ask him question after question after question in the middle of the night, Steve ignores it.  
  
Bucky especially likes to harass Steve in the bathroom, and wait for him to get out of the shower. So, never one to be outdone, he decides to embrace his audience.  
  
The third time it happens, instead of wearing his boxers into the shower, he gets out of the shower, and doesn’t even grab a towel. He makes no effort to dry himself off, and instead he parades around the apartment, dripping wet, and leaving a dangerous path of puddles in his wake. He grabs a carton of ice cream from out of the freezer and he heads over to the sofa.  
  
“You wouldn’t.” Bucky hisses, in horror, but Steve is all smirks as he takes a seat. _Naked_ and wet, and close to ruining the upholstery.  
  
“Bastard.” Bucky says seething, and Steve shrugs his shoulders. The spoonful of ice cream he’s holding in his hands moves just a fraction and a huge lump of Ben and Jerry’s lands onto the cushion. Steve wipes it away with his thumb, before sucking the digit clean, in an obnoxiously slow manner. He takes his time to lap the dessert up with his tongue, pursing his lips as needed, and moaning unnecessarily.  
  
Bucky gapes, and ends up staring a little longer than he should.  
  
Steve wonders if ghosts can still get hard.  
  
Bucky disappears suddenly, so he figures he has his answer.

 

 

***

 

 

It’s been a long week, and as much as Steve enjoys the possibility of getting one-up on Bucky, a ghost doesn’t need sleep, and Steve’s already running on fumes as it is. He curls into bed, cold, and tired, and cranky, which all serve as the perfect environment in which his nightmares can flourish.  
  
In his dream, he’s at a funeral. He’s at _Toro_ ’ _s_ funeral. He’s wearing a horrible black suit that stretches uncomfortably over his broad shoulders, and he looks ridiculous standing next to the family his fellow soldier left behind. Little Jewish women, looking sallow and sad, with their wan smiles, and their greying hair nod at him as he passes by.    
  
_Thank you for coming_ , Raymond’s family say. _Thanks for nothing_ , Steve hears.  
  
In the middle of the service Steve can feel a tickling on the back of his neck, and then on his head, his shoulders, the back of his hand.  
  
He looks up to see dust falling down from the top of the Synagogues vaulted ceiling.  
  
Except it isn’t dust at all.  
  
It’s sand.  
  
And it’s streaming down from above at an alarming rate—it bursts through the roof, and Steve’s drowning in it. He’s alone, surrounded by the desert. He’s trapped in an hour glass and he’s running out of time. He tries screaming, but the second he opens his mouth, the sand rushes in, and he’s choking on the granules, inhaling it as he tries to breathe.  
  
He’s being buried alive.  
  
The exit is blocked. There’s insurgents on every side. He can smell the fires burning, taste the cinders and ash on his tongue. Someone is shouting in the distance. They’re coming, they’re coming—  
  
And he wakes up, covered in sweat, his body shuddering back to the land of the living. He looks down at his tight fists balled up into holding the soiled sheets, and with his hands shaking he just about manages to let go.  
  
He wants to shower without an audience. He wants to sit in the dark all day, without a grouchy companion hovering beside him, yelling for him to leave, because he’s not wanted here.  
  
He’s had enough of people telling him that as it is.  
  
He’s had enough of being haunted by this ghost, or by any others lurking in his psyche, so when the haunting continues, Steve thinks about going to his old parish for advise on local exorcists in the diocese. He shudders at the thought of what Father Lantom might say.  
  
Steve gets up, he gets dressed, he foregoes breakfast, and he tries the internet again. He looks up out-of-body experiences while researching various hauntings in the tri-state area, and all the while Bucky, the not-so-friendly ghost is making his way through singing _300,000 bottles of beer on the wall.  
  
_ Determined not to give Bucky the time of day, Steve decides to focus intently on the computer instead. He ends up reading more and more into a thread about possession, and when his phone buzzes with a text message off Sam he tries not to flinch at the light _ping.  
  
_ “‘ _Hey, you okay?_ ’” The ghost reads the the text out aloud over his shoulder, having appeared out of nowhere.  
  
“Ahh!” Steve jumps for the second time in as many minutes, throwing his phone across the room for no particular reason other than that he was scared and it seemed a logical thing to do.  
  
The ghost gives him an amused look, but Steve doesn’t find this funny anymore.  
  
“Jumpy, much?”  
  
“Says the ghost _haunting me_!” Steve yells as he gets up in search of his cell. Somehow it’s still working even with a huge crack down the middle of the screen, and Bucky just hovers there, obnoxiously, inspecting the damage with a curious look.  
  
“You should be more careful.” He tells Steve. “That’s bullshit, by the way.” Bucky continues, looking over at the webpage on Steve’s laptop once more. “‘ _Lack of sleep, excessive sleep, sleep walking, sleep paralysis_ .’” He reads. “Don’t you think these are a little contradictory? I’m not _possessing_ you, you idiot.”  
  
“Sounds exactly like something someone possessing me would say.” Steve replies, breathing in through his nose to try and slow his heart rate back down. He slams the laptop shut, and heads into the kitchen but Bucky is undeterred.  
  
“Look mister—”  
  
“Steve.” He reminds him.  
  
“Look, _Steve_ , the only thing I possess is this apartment because _this.is.my.home_ ,” he says, punctuating his words with a step closer in Steve’s direction. “So if you could just leave already, then I wouldn’t have to keep bothering you in the first place!”  
  
“What, so you can just haunt the next person that moves in? Newsflash pal, you’re dead, and if it wasn’t me living here, then it would just be someone else.”  
  
Bucky’s response is to start singing showtunes.  
  
Loudly.  
  
Over and over and over again.  
  
“That’s it!” Steve shouts, finally at the end of his patience. “I've had it with you. I've tried to be nice, I’ve tried giving you time to accept whatever the hell happened to you, but I’m done. You're outta here!”

 

 

***

 

 

Steve makes sure to call a priest with no ties to him, his extended family across the sea, or his own parish, and he watches in dismay as the elderly gentleman throws holy water across the room, compelling the spirit to leave with the power of Christ at his tail.  
  
Bucky just stands there with his arms crossed, dry as a bone.  
  
“A little more to the left.” Steve suggests, correcting the priest’s aim, not that it makes any difference. The exorcism is unsuccessful, and Steve learns that Bucky really enjoys being able to say _I told you so.  
  
_ Next, Steve resorts to Craigslist, and after forty-five minutes he finds a crew of ghost hunters from New Jersey that are willing to travel. Three guys in boiler suits turn up with goggles, and packs of something-or-other strapped to their backs. They’re adamant that they’ve caught the ghost in the small snow-globe-like device that they’d brought with them, but Bucky is in the same place he’s been for the last hour—by Steve’s side, purposefully making an obnoxious buzzing sound—and Steve puts his head in his hands to muffle his screams.  
  
He’s about ready to refuse to pay them, when the stereo in the kitchen comes on suddenly, and starts switching channels. The white noise is loud, and combined with the sudden creaking of the pipes, it sounds ominous and uninviting. The ghostbusters see themselves out, and no one asks Steve for the cheque.  
  
“This is fun.” Bucky says, as if daring Steve to do better. “Who’s next?”  
  
A man called Dr. Strange agrees to take a meeting, but stops short on Steve’s stoop. He frowns as if in deep concentration, and the medallion around his neck seems to almost glow in the midday light. The eye shines purple and Steve could swear he can hear whispers.  
  
“This is not a matter for me to meddle in,” the mystic says cryptically, as he closes his eyes and reaches out towards the door, curling his wrist as if summoning something otherworldly.  
  
Steve looks back at his apartment building and he hears a rustling behind him.  
  
When he turns back around, the doctor is gone.    
  
There’s only one more person Steve can think to try, and he’s really at the end of his wits, so he calls the bookstore he’d visited a few days ago, he asks for Thor, and he waits.

 

 

***

 

 

“Who is this guy?” Bucky asks, arriving just in time to make everyone’s lives difficult and commenting on Thor’s appearance. “He looks like he took a wrong turn on his way to _Californiiaaaaa_.”  
  
“Okay there’s definitely a presence.” Thor says.  
  
“Oh, here comes the bullshit. Please, do continue.” Bucky mocks, with a hand-wave that Thor cannot see. “His glasses don’t even have _glass_ in them, they’re just frames, Steve.”  
  
“Dude,” Thor says suddenly—as if he were speaking to interrupt Bucky himself, despite not actually being able to hear him. “This thing is _hostile_.”  
  
Steve can’t argue with that.  
  
“You should move.” Thor says.  
  
“What?” Steve says, incredulously. “I’m not moving! He can move!”  
  
“I like this guy.” Bucky comments, having finally met someone on his side.  
  
“This _being_ is borderline malevolent.” Thor continues. “You should leave. Have you ever seen what an angry poltergeists can do?”  
  
Steve thinks of the sounds of the shrill radio, and the cracked mirror in the bathroom. He thinks of the brand-new pipes creaking like they’re thirty-years older than they actually are, and the incessant noise-making that’s driving Steve insane.  
  
“I’ve seen him _get angry_ if that’s what you mean.”  
  
Bucky rolls his eyes.  
  
“Steve, the spirit’s are not to be trifled with. You cannot take this lightly.”  
  
“I’m not taking it lightly, but I’m not moving either, I pay rent!” Steve complains.  
  
“Can you not feel that?” Thor asks. “There’s a darkness here, like a cancer of hatred searing towards you, like waves hitting the shore, it will chip away at your very existence.”  
  
“Well that sounds a little dramatic,” Bucky says, looking unsure, but all Steve can think of is the sand in his dream, streaming in from above...  
  
“I’m not moving,” he says, coughing to clear his throat, even though he knows there’s nothing really there.  
  
“Surely this place is not worth the turmoil?” Thor asks.  
  
“What?” Bucky says, insulted, while Steve says, “Yes it is,” at the same time. Bucky keeps listing the apartment’s attributes, but all Thor does is rub his temples. Steve wonders if Thor can hear the echoes of Bucky’s argument, even if he can’t hear the words.  
  
“Do you have anything to drink?” Thor asks, ignoring Bucky’s waxing on about his fireplace, and Steve nods, directing Thor to follow him to the kitchen. He hands the medium a bottle of beer, and watches, half-impressed, as the larger man downs it in one.  
  
“Moving out can’t be the only solution.” Steve says, when he think that Thor is sufficiently hydrated. “Can’t you just talk to him? Tell him he should pass on?”  
  
"‘ _Could you please talk to him?’_ " Bucky repeats with an exaggerated whine in his voice. “Really? You sound pathetic.”  
  
“Screw you!” Steve responds. “I'm ignoring you.”  
  
“I'm ignoring _you!_ ” Bucky responds.  
  
“He won’t accept that he’s dead,” Steve says, turning back to face Thor. “I told him to go towards the light and he wouldn’t go!”  
  
“There is no light!” Bucky screams back. “The only thing that’s here is you, and you’re dragging me in like a great black hole—”  
  
“So leave already!” Steve shouts.  
  
“Woah,” Thor says, only able to see one-side of the heated argument. “What is going on?” He asks, squinting as if suffering a migraine.  
  
“Do you think I like this?” Bucky asks, infuriated. “You think I want to be here? You think this is easy for me?” his voice is getting louder and louder and Thor frowns as he looks up to see the lights beginning to flicker.  
  
“Steve…” Thor starts to say but Steve is breathing heavily, caught in the heat of the moment as Bucky continues to shout and Steve readies himself for his next part in the fight.  
  
“I know something’s different! I know something’s not right!” Bucky finishes, his shoulders heaving with exertion. Steve goes to respond, but Thor cuts him off at the pass.  
  
“My friend, I do not think I can help you. This is one of the most alive spirits I’ve ever been around. He’s not going anywhere.”  
  
Steve spins around, frowning. Did he just hear him right?  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“I agree with the spirit.” Thor says, shrugging simply. “I do not believe that he is dead.”  
  
“ _What?_!” Steve balks.  
  
“Told you so.” Bucky says, grinning.  
  
“But you?” Thor continues to say to Steve. “Friend, it is you I am concerned for. I have never before seen such a dark aura surround a person like it does you.” Thor puts his hand on Steve’s shoulder, and Steve hates that Bucky’s still watching. “This darkness is killing you. You have to let them go.”  
  
“How can I when he won’t leave?” Steve asks, frustrated but Thor shakes his head.  
  
“You misunderstand. I am not talking about the spirit that resides here. I am talking about the others that you won’t leave behind. The ones in _here_ .” Thor says wisely, putting his hand to Steve’s chest, and seeming to almost stare _through_ him to the pain he’s hiding underneath the surface. “That is where your haunting truly resides, is it not?”  
  
“I don’t want to talk about that.” Steve says, backing up against the refrigerator, and closing off, shutting down as he steps away. The room feels smaller. A cold bead of sweat trickles down from his hairline and Steve can feel it like acid against his skin.  
  
“What’s he talking about?” Bucky asks. “What others?”  
  
“That’s none of your business.” Steve snaps.  
  
“Oh so you get to live in my home, and try to throw me out but I don’t get to ask you one little question? What are you hiding? Huh? Huh, Steve? What’s got you all worked up? What’s so important that it has you by the balls—”  
  
“Stop it!” Steve yells.  
  
“Oh you can dish it out but you can’t take it? You brought an exorcist in here, but one mention about the shit you’re carrying around with you and—”  
  
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about so shut the fuck up!” Steve yells, his anger reaching its peak as he scrambles to leave. This was supposed to be about the ghost, not him, not his demons, not his problems, and if he wanted to deal with any of that then he wouldn’t keep skirting Sam’s attempts to get him to open up, or avoid his therapist completely.  
  
He finally finds his keys.  
  
“I am sorry for your loss, brother.” Thor says, and Steve slumps by the door.  
  
“The door’s on the latch, just pull it closed behind you and it’ll lock.” Steve says quietly, purposely not making eye-contact.  
  
“A word to the wise, spirit,” Steve barely hears Thor say to thin air as he leaves. “Show some respect for the dead.”

 

 

***

 

 

Steve wastes no time in heading straight for the bar. He hadn’t planned on taking Sam up on his offer for a night out with old friends, but right now he can’t ignore the urge to drink his pain away. It’s the numbness he craves more than anything else.  
  
He had hoped that Bucky couldn’t leave the apartment.  
  
“Steve!”  
  
He was wrong.  
  
“Steve, I’m sorry, I didn’t...I didn’t know!” The ghost shouts after him, but he’s so adept at ignoring him now that he just keeps walking. He cuts through a dark alleyway, and just as he’s about to push through the bar-door, Bucky catches up—or... _astral projects_ , or whatever spirits do to just appear out of nothingness as they do.  
  
“This won’t help.” Bucky says, as they both glance through the frosted glass at the happy, jovial, and merry folk inside.  
  
“How would you know?” Steve asks, testily. “Have you ever been to a bar in your life?”  
  
Inside, the music is loud, and there are license-plates plastered all over the wall from various different states. The low hanging lamps are made of different coloured glass, and the whole place smells of smoke, and beer, and sweat.  
  
Steve ignores Bucky’s advise and pushes his way past the other patrons to the corner where he can see Sam. Riley is at a corner booth with a group of their mutual friends. Tony Stark gives his a nod in greeting, while his partner Pepper waves with a little more enthusiasm. In the other corner there’s a band playing, and Steve figures the live music must be why the place is so packed.  
  
“Steve! Hey! You came.” Sam greets happily from the bar when Steve gets closer.  
  
“Good to see you, Rogers.” James Rhodes nods with a half-salute of his drink. Steve nods in return. “You too, Rhodey,” he says.  
  
“Danvers is running a little late, she’s coming down from Boston.” Sam tells Steve. “And Wade told me to suck a dick when I text him, so he’ll probably turn up later.”  
  
Steve nods, already regretting his decision to come here. There’s more people than he was expecting, than he was really _prepared_ for, and he still can’t decide which of his emotions is gonna get the better of him, be it anger or depression or a dangerous combination of the two.  
  
“What about Bruce?” He asks, having to raise his voice slightly over the general chatter of the other bar patrons, while he orders a scotch for himself.  
  
“You didn’t hear?” Rhodes sounds surprised, so Sam must be keeping Steve’s hermit-like status on the down-low. He barely hears Rhodey’s explanation about _anger management classes_ , because Bucky has decided to once again make his presence known now that Steve’s drink has appeared on the bar.  
  
“Don’t drink that Steve, getting drunk isn’t gonna help.”  
  
“Shut up.” Steve mutters, and thankfully Rhodey doesn’t hear him.  
  
But Sam does, and he frowns at what he sees as Steve twitching randomly, when in reality, he’s just trying to dodge Bucky’s advances as the spirit tries to hit him—and even though he won’t make real contact, they both know that when Bucky’s apparition passes through Steve, it’s no walk in the park.  
  
“How are you coming along with those hallucinations?” Sam asks, with a quiet subtlety that few can manage, but that Sam Wilson does best.  
  
“I just need sleep.”  
  
“Yeah. And how’s your sleeping pattern?” Sam asks.  
  
“Non-existent!” Bucky pipes up, and Steve bristles.  
  
“Fine, it’s fine.” Steve says to Sam, before dodging yet another one of Bucky’s passes. “Would you knock it off!” Steve hisses in Bucky’s direction, and Sam looks a little sad to have heard it.  
  
“Steve…” Sam starts to say in concern.  
  
“You can’t drink these feelings away.” Bucky says.  
  
“Watch me.” Steve mutters in response as he goes to swig his drink down in one go, but before the glass can reach his lips, he sees Bucky move out of the corner of his eye and suddenly that cold feeling comes back with full force. His blood feels like ice in his veins and he can smell rain in the air, hear shouts, but more importantly he’s in a never ending sea of pain—  
  
“Argh!” Steve shouts, wrenching himself away from Bucky’s spirit, the latter of which having tried to possess him. Annoyed, and not thinking, he tosses his drink at Bucky, but the alcohol sails right on through, until it lands on some stranger at the bar, who now looks incredibly pissed off. His beard is dripping with scotch, and his friends look ready to hold the guy back.  
  
“Steve!” Sam says in surprise.  
  
“Woah, Rogers, you okay?” He hears someone else ask, and he thinks it must have been Tony. _Great_ , Steve thinks, now everyone thinks I’m crazy.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Steve calls over to the stranger who got drenched, not having realised that the man has already left the bar. “I’m sorry,” he repeats in Sam’s direction, pointedly ignoring Bucky completely. “I have to go—”  
  
“Steve, talk to me, please. I’m worried about you, man.”  
  
“I know, and I’m not helping I know that. I just….I just need to leave.” Steve insists, before pushing through the busy bar and out the door.  
  
“You’ll thank me for that one day.” Bucky says with a frustrating amount of triumph once they’re outside.  
  
“Don’t count on it.” Steve mutters.  
  
He hears someone come up behind him, and he turns around expecting to see Sam—only to have a meaty fist hit him square on the nose.  
  
“Steve!” Bucky shouts in alarm, before turning towards the bar to call for help. They can’t hear him, of course, and Steve stumbles back into the alleyway, dazed from the sucker-punch.  
  
“You little shit,” the bearded stranger says gruffly, and Steve recognises him from the bar. The unfortunate patron on the other end of his flying scotch. He can see where the alcohol has already stained the too-small t-shirt that’s hiding the guy’s gut. “You think you’re funny?” He asks, clearly not amused.  
  
Steve grabs the lid of the trashcan beside him to block the next fist aimed his way, and holds it aloft like a shield.  
  
“I don’t want any trouble.” He says, a little nasally. He can taste the blood that’s running in rivulets from his nose.  
  
“You should’ve thought of that before you threw your drink in my face!” The man sneers.  
  
“Hey! Asshole!” Bucky tries to get the guy’s attention but to no avail. “Pick on someone your own size!” He keeps yelling, as though Steve wasn’t a muscular man in his own right. Bucky even tries jumping into the man to possess him momentarily like he did Steve, but he falls straight through as if lacking whatever tether helps bind him to Steve. Meanwhile, the stranger lunges at Rogers, making to grab the trashcan and wrench it from out of his fingers.  
  
He has no idea that that was Steve’s plan all along.  
  
With the guy’s hands occupied, Steve lands a hard right hook across his jaw, and when that doesn’t knock him out, he kicks him in calf, so that his leg buckles, and he’s falling onto one knee. The man growls angrily, but when he goes to tackle Steve again from his crouched position, Steve’s ready. Rogers lunges forward, grabs the man’s right arm, and dances around him, pulling the arm back and pinning him up against the wall of the bar.  
  
“Back off.” He hisses into the stranger’s ear.  
  
The heavier opponent uses his body to push Steve back against the adjacent wall, and the side of Steve’s head collides painfully with the brick. Tired, running on fumes, and more than ready to end this, Steve wraps his forearm around the man’s neck and pulls in tight. He curls his leg around the man’s waist, and he holds on—fighting back against the assailants attempts to buck him off. He flexes his forearm, and pushes with his other hand against the back of the man’s neck until after a few seconds, the stranger slumps, unconscious in Steve’s arms.  
  
“Holy shit.” Bucky says, looking both freaked out and impressed at the same time. “I thought you were done for.”  
  
“I had him on the ropes.” Steve mutters with a split lip, as he carefully puts the man into the recovery position to be on the safe side. He wipes at the blood that’s dripping into his own eye, marring his vision, and he sways a little on his feet, before stalking off in the direction of his apartment. With each stumble, he wonders what other shit he’ll end up having to deal with on the way home.  
  
Sam calls his cell, but he doesn’t answer. Tony sends him a text that says, _I’m here if you wanna talk_. Bucky calls his name, and he ignores that too. In fact, he perfects the art of the stoic as he trudges back home in complete silence.  
  
When he gets to his building, he’s glad to see that no one’s roaming the halls except for a cat that seems perfectly happy to be perched on the bannister on the second floor. On his way up the stairs, he can hear soft music, and when he puts his ear to Apartment C’s door, he can hear the slight crackle of a needle drop, reminding him of his mother’s old gramophone, before the soft crooning of Mildred Bailey pipes up with her Orchestra _. It’s love I’m after, I don’t wanna be a millionaire, the only thing on earth for which I care-e-e is love…  
  
_ The music calms him down a little, and it follows him all the way up to his own door, only stopping when he shuts it closed behind him. He locks the latch, even though he knows it’s no good to keep a certain ghost out, and he shrugs off his coat, throwing it over the back of the sofa, as goes off in search of the first aid kit.  
  
“Why are you still here?” He asks, dejectedly when he sees Bucky’s reflection in the mirror of the medicine cabinet, next to his own cracked image, stained with blood, and looking more than a little worse for wear. He can’t keep doing this. He can’t spend each and every day arguing with someone that nobody else can see. He has his own demons to wrestle with, he doesn’t need to add ghosts to the damn mix.  
  
“I have no idea,” Bucky says, sounding equally as deflated as he sits down on the toilet, and joins Steve in the bathroom. “Why are you the only one who can see me?” He asks, countering Steve’s question with his own.  
  
Steve shrugs and starts rummaging through his first aid kit.  
  
“There,” Bucky says, pointing to the cotton swabs, as if he could read Steve’s mind. Steve frowns, but goes on with cleaning the cut above his eye from where his head had smacked against the brick earlier. Bucky stands suddenly, moving with inhuman speed, until he’s right in front of Steve and he’s peering at the cut intensely. “You won’t need stitches, but you should use a cold compress on your eye—it’ll help with the swelling.”  
  
Steve doesn’t comment on Bucky’s deft ability to deal with his injuries, but he can’t help ribbing him about his distinct change of tune.  
  
“So you’re being nice now?” Steve asks, offhandedly, as he continues to clean the blood and dirt off of his face. Bucky sighs, and sits back down.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Bucky apologises. “I guess I don’t really know you all that well.” He looks Steve right in the eye. “How long have you been back?” Bucky asks, “Stateside, I mean.”  
  
_Intuitive asshole,_ Steve thinks, making sure to hide his semi-frustrated smirk.  
  
“Long enough.” Steve replies, but the vague answer appears to pacify Bucky’s curiosity because he doesn’t ask for more, and just nods.  
  
“It’s none of my business what you…. _do_ , or how you deal with...anything.” Bucky continues, miserably. “But I don’t know why I’m here, or why you can see me or why we’re in this situation in the first place. I can’t remember anything, everything’s just….blank. And there’s this gaping hole inside of me and I’m—” Bucky stops abruptly, curling his hands into fists and looking up at the ceiling as if he’ll find answers there.  
  
He looks back at Steve.  
  
“I’m scared.” He admits, and Steve can feel the emotion threatening to choke him as he watches Bucky’s desperate miniature break down in the middle of his—their—small bathroom. The ghost curls in on himself, appearing smaller and smaller, like he’s trying to crush the emptiness inside of him, to bridge the gap where his life should be, where his memories should be.  
  
“All I know is when I’m not with you it’s like I don’t even exist.” Bucky sighs, and stares down at his hands as he turns them over and inspects them as if he expects to vanish completely.  
  
“Maybe I am dead.” He says, sounding lost.  
  
“I’m sorry, Buck,” Steve says, as he crouches down to be at the same level, his lips quirk at the nickname of a nickname that he’s given the ghost, and he ignores the small sting of his split lip as he does so. He pushes his tongue against the cut for a second to ease the burn. “Maybe I was wrong,” he says, kindly, recognising how his own hotheadedness had played a part in their arguments. “Maybe you’re not dead, maybe it’s just...your superpower, or something. What do I know?”  
  
Bucky gives him a sad smile.  
  
“If I could just remember something about who I am, or who I was...at least then I’d know once and for all.” Bucky tells him. “I just don’t know if I can do it by myself.” He admits.  
  
Steve considers his options for a moment. He can either accept that he’s finally cracked--that his hallucination is so all encompassing that he’s having in-depth conversations and giving it an intricate backstory….or he can he can roll with it.  
  
“Okay,” he says, and the two of them fall into a semi-comfortable silence.  
  
“Do you—I mean, uh, wanna watch a movie?” Steve asks, a little awkwardly when he’s done patching himself up. “I mean, we can’t go knocking on your neighbours doors until the morning, so...”  
  
Bucky doesn’t say no, and he follows him over to the couch when he leaves, so Steve flicks through the channels until he sees that _Wrath of Khan_ is playing, and he leaves it on.  
  
Steve’s head aches from his run in in the alleyway. He’s sure to regret not icing his knuckles in the morning, and he’s too hopped up on adrenaline to sleep. He doesn’t even want to think of how he’s ever going to face his friends again now that he’s completely humiliated himself in front of them, but right now Captain Kirk is giving Khan Noonien Singh shit over the comms., and Bucky’s watching it all with an almost child-like kind of fascination that makes Steve smile.  
  
He finds himself itching to hold a pencil for the first time in weeks, and if Bucky notices Steve grabbing a notepad to start scribbling in, then he doesn’t pay him any mind. Steve lets the pencil glide across the paper, and for once, it’s effortless. He barely even feels the sting of his torn knuckles from his earlier punching.  
  
No, this is what his hands were really made for.  
  
It’s actually, weirdly, and surprisingly, kinda nice.

 

 ***

 

 

Steve doesn’t remember falling asleep, and he doesn’t remember seeing Spock die either, so the fact that the sun has risen outside means that he must have gotten at least four or five hours of sleep. It makes a change, and the only real thing that’s different is, well...  
  
Bucky’s spirit is sat on the window ledge, staring down below at the little people walking by, and Steve figures it’s about time they figure this whole thing out. When he gets up, his portrait of Bucky flutters to the ground, and Steve wonders if the ghost saw his unfinished work or not. He seems pre-occupied with the world outside, and Steve thinks there’s a kind of melancholy about him that he hadn’t noticed before. He supposes they’re kindred spirits in that sense. Pun, not intended.  
  
“Morning,” Steve greets, making a show of waking up to give Bucky time to adjust his mask—something Steve knows first hand, is appreciated.  
  
“Hey,” Bucky greets, and they can both tell that something’s changed. Their animosity has all but faded, and it’s been replaced with something akin to respect. They’ve definitely acclimated to one another’s presence, and for the first time since this whole thing started, Steve _wants_ to get to the bottom of this. Not because he wants Bucky gone, but because he wants to give him some kind of closure. He wants to _help_ him.  
  
It’s a good feeling.

 

 

***

 

 

Once they’ve been door to door of some of the neighbouring apartments, they get the general gist that Bucky is either anti-social, a drug dealer, or just plain invisible. A woman with a pointed chin and a tightly wound hair-bun complained that she couldn’t buy the unit upstairs for herself, having dreamt of creating her own two-story apartment, and the scary looking guy with the eye-patch didn’t even say a word, he just stared them down until they backed away.  
  
They did manage to get at least one person to confirm Bucky’s general description, so that’s at least something to go in the ‘ _not a hallucination_ ’ column in Steve’s head.  
  
“It’s like I was a ghost before I was even dead,” Bucky bemoans, and Steve doubts this is helping his mood any. “It’s like a horrible dream.”  
  
The next door opens, and the first thing Steve sees is a hand shooting out to block the escape of a cat. He sees two ornate gold rings on the person’s third and little finger, and when the door opens completely, Steve sees a man standing there, with a wary look on his face. His brown eyes have a piercing way about them—and he’s holding a frustrated mewling cat in his arms. His responses are clipped, and to the point: He has no idea who Bucky is, or was, nor does he have a particular opinion to get across like the rest of the tenants have.  
  
Bucky just stares at the cat in the man’s arms, and the cat stares right back.  
  
“If you are looking for answers,” he says as Steve thanks him and goes to leave, “then I suggest you try Margaret Carter.” His distinctive African accent puts emphasis on the r’s and t’s of the name, and he points over to Apartment C where Steve had heard the music playing last night.  
  
They knock, but there’s no answer, and that just leaves one more apartment left for them to try.

 

 

***

 

 

The door opens to reveal a young woman wearing a tight crop top, intended for working out, and a pair of low-rise leggings. Her long blonde hair has been styled into a bun that sits on the top of her head—with several strands falling loose that curl into small ringlets, framing her face. Her lips are pursed somewhat, and painted with a blush pink.  
  
“She seems normal,” Bucky says happily, clearly in need of a better response than the ones he’s been getting so far. “I bet we were friends.”  
  
“Hi, I’m Steve, I just...moved in upstairs—”  
  
“Hi Steve!” Lorraine says, with a wide smile that reminds him a little of a predatory shark. “I’m Lorraine, come on in!”  
  
“She’s friendly, this is good, this is a good sign.” Bucky continues to mutter in the background, but Steve recognises a pass when he sees one.  
  
“No, that’s really nice of you, but this’ll just take a sec, I was just wondering about the apartment upstairs, it belonged to a guy—”  
  
“Yeah I think there was someone up there, but…” Her words trail off, and she’s leaning forward a little, winding a piece of her hair around her forefinger.  
  
“But?” Steve asks, urging her to continue, while Bucky frowns by his side.  
  
“Between you and me?” She starts to say, “he wasn’t the nicest guy, y’know?”  
  
“Okay so maybe we weren’t close friends.” Bucky says warily.  
  
“He never came to tenant meetings. Kept _super_ weird hours, totally anti-social...like a cat lady...only without cats.” She says, laughing at her own joke. “But actually, I think he hated cats. He always used to hiss at T’Challa’s cats if they were roaming the halls.  
  
Steve thinks about the man they had just met in Apartment D, whose home had sounded like a cattery.  
  
“Okay we’re done here.” Bucky announces, clearly offended, and Steve gives Lorraine a forced smile as he goes to leave.  
  
“Wait,” she calls, chewing her gum with an open mouth, “this is going to sound super embarrassing but I’ve got a window I can’t get open—”  
  
“She has got to be kidding.” Bucky mutters, and Steve gives him a curious look because that sure as hell sounded like jealousy. “She’s inviting you in, numbnuts.” Bucky goes on to say, pointing out the obvious while Lorraine waits patiently—occasionally batting her eyelashes, and looking at Steve’s lips suggestively.  
  
“Well, if it’s just painted shut, you could run a screwdriver along the seam and that can jam it open—” Steve tries to suggest, earnestly while Bucky mutters that he’s a naive boy scout.  
  
“Nope! Tried it. Didn’t work.” Lorraine assures him, dramatically shrugging as if to say _I give up_ , when really she’s just getting started. “It. Will. Not. Budge.” She continues, emphasising every word with a purposeful snap of her bubble gum.  
  
Bucky’s rolling his eyes now. “No preliminaries, just right on in there. A- _mazing_.”  
  
“I’d love to help but I—I have...dinner plans—”  
  
“Perfect,” Lorraine replies, nonplussed. “I’ve got dessert.”  
  
“I think I just threw up in my mouth.” Says Bucky.  
  
Steve laughs nervously, pulling a little at the collar of his shirt. Lorraine’s leaning forward, and her face is only a mere inch or so from Steve’s, but all Steve can think of is Bucky, and that in itself is making him hot under the collar.  
  
Bucky’s jealous. He’s actually jealous.  
  
“I’m gonna go.” Steve tells Lorraine, because surely she can see that this approach is not working on him. “Nice it to meet you!” He remembers to call back over his shoulder as he heads back upstairs. It doesn’t hurt to be polite after all.  
  
“Yeesh,” Bucky mutters, looking down the stairs to see that Lorraine is still watching Steve from below. “I didn’t expect that.”  
  
“What? Is it so hard to believe that someone might actually want to hit on me?” Steve asks, half-joking as he searches for the apartment key in every one of his pockets.  
  
“Trust me pal, that’s not even slightly hard to believe.” Bucky responds, unexpectedly.  
  
“What?” Steve asks, doing a double take.  
  
“What?” Bucky repeats, surprised at his own slip-up. “What are you doing?” He asks, changing the subject while Steve rummages around in his pockets.  
  
“Dammit, I forgot the key.” Steve mutters.  
  
“There’s a spare under the fire extinguisher.” Bucky tells him, waving in its direction while Steve frowns.  
  
“I can’t believe no-one even knew me. Not one. Talk about being disconnected.” Bucky says, without a hint of irony. Steve isn’t sure what he can say to comfort Bucky, so he goes about grabbing a tin of soup, and looking for the can opener. He opens one of the kitchen drawers and sees a matchbook inside attached to a drinks receipt tucked in at the back behind an old rolling pin.  
  
“Check it out,” he says, turning the book over in his hands. The sign on the front advertises a bar near Coney Island called _The Archers_ and when Steve flips it open he sees three matches, and an address scribbled in messy shorthand on the inside.  
  
“I can’t make that out, is that a five or a six?” Steve asks, looking at the address.  
  
“I think it's a…” Bucky starts to say, squinting. “A five? Yeah it’s definitely a five. 2815 West 22nd Street,” he continues, and Steve’s surprised he can make it out.”  
  
“Is that your handwriting?” Steve asks, but Bucky shakes his head.  
  
“No I don’t think so. But we have an address, a receipt, and a book of matches from some dive bar by the boardwalk. Do you know what this means?”  
  
“We could start a very small fire?”  
  
“No, punk,” Bucky says with an eye-roll. “It means there's still hope.”

 

 

***

 

 

They decide to try the bar first. They head down into the subway, and Steve swipes his metrocard, only to slam into the turnstile bar when it doesn’t move. He growls and swipes again, but the same thing happens and he narrowly avoids getting slammed in the crotch a second time.  
  
Someone sighs behind him and Bucky, the asshole, just glides straight on through. Steve swipes again, and the turnstile flashes green, finally.  
  
“Come on! We haven’t got all day!” Bucky laughs, and Steve thinks he kinda likes the sound, even if it is at his own expense.  
  
On the train, the windows are all key’d to hell — graffiti’d scram marks mar the view of Brooklyn rushing by, fading into the distance as they make their way towards the shore. The screech of brakes, and the steady chug-chug of the car on the rail tracks is loud in Steve’s ears, and he’s starting to remember exactly why he prefers to walk everywhere.  
  
The woman in front of them can’t stop sneezing and a man is holding his puppy close to his chest. The dog shivers and whines at the noises of the subway car rattling underground from inside of the tote bag he’s been placed in.  
  
_I feel your pain, little Pup._ Steve thinks.  
  
He realises then that Bucky’s been talking to him for a while and he hasn’t been listening, so he tunes back into the conversation and gets out his cellphone to pretend to be on a call should he need to respond.  
  
“I remember the graffiti being so much worse as a kid,” Bucky says, gesturing to inside the subway car. “I think...no, never mind.”  
  
“What?” Steve prompts, and Bucky makes a frustrated noise in the back of his throat.  
  
“It’s like, some things I _know_ . _I know_ I’ve lived in Brooklyn my whole life. I know my apartment is _my_ apartment,” he looks at Steve pointedly for a moment, but there’s no malice in his tone. “I know those things, but it’s like the connections aren’t there, like my whole life is on the tip of my tongue and I can’t...fuck, this is so annoying.”  
  
“We’ll find something in Coney Island. You’ll see.” Steve says into his phone, and smiling at Bucky as he’s sat beside him.  
  
The lights blur as they pass by, and there’s a kid on the train, sitting by the doors with bruised knuckles. His eyes look glazed, and Steve remembers then about his own black eye from last night’s brawl. The boy jumps every time the conductor makes an announcement and no one will sit anywhere near him, but Steve doubts he’s noticed the wide berth he’s been given.  
  
“Hey kid,” Steve says when the train slows to a crawl as it enters the Stillwell Avenue station. “You dropped this.” He puts a wad of crumpled bills into the boy’s hands and jumps out of the closing doors before the kid has a chance to make any kind of protest.  
  
“That was nice of you,” Bucky comments and Steve shrugs. Someone had to show the kid a kindness, it might as well have been him.

 

 

***

 

 

They find the bar easily enough, and Steve and Bucky have a quick look around but nothing sticks out—there’s no shrine dedicated to their fallen patron, so it’s not really much help. They’re about to leave, when Steve throws caution to the wind and walks back over to the bar and calls over to the man standing there.  
  
“This is gonna sound really weird—” Steve says, using his most earnest of expressions in the the hope that the guy will take pity on him, “—But I’m looking for the guy that ordered—”  
  
And Steve’s about to show the guy some random receipt, from almost a year ago, complete with an old matchbook and an address of a house a few blocks away scrawled inside of it, when he stops suddenly.  
  
Because now that he’s right by the bar, he can see hundreds of photographs pinned up on the back wall. And there’s one face in particular, smiling up at him. Bucky’s face. _I’d know that mug anywhere,_ Steve thinks, and then he wonders when the hell did that happen?  
  
“You gonna finish that sentence, buddy?” The bartender asks, putting down the glass he’s been cleaning, as if he wants to have both hands free to throw Steve out if he causes any trouble.  
  
“Steve?” Bucky asks in concern from the doorway.  
  
“Who’s that guy?” Steve blurts out instead, pointing over to the picture. It’s definitely Bucky, he’s sure of it. There’s a redhead stood next to him, and they’re both holding sparklers and huge pitchers of beer. Bucky has a piece of paper in his hand too, and it’s on fire.  
  
The bartender shrugs, “before my time,” he says unapologetically but Steve won’t be deterred.  
  
“Can I have a look?” He asks. “I think I know him.”  
  
The bartender turns around and unpins the picture from the wall, handing it over without a care.  
  
“Are all these guys regulars?” Steve asks, gesturing to the other photographs, and the guy nods.  
  
“It used to be one of the old bartender’s traditions. He loved taking pictures. Regular ol’ Hawkeye.” He says, rolling his eyes as he hands the picture over to Steve, and walks away.  
  
“Hey, what was the bartender’s name?” Steve calls back but the man ignores him, and Steve thinks he’s pushing his luck as it is. For his trouble, Steve leaves a tip on the counter, pockets the photograph, and leaves hurriedly.  
  
“What was that all about?” Bucky asks, when they’re far enough away that they’ve arrived at the Coney Island boardwalk.  
  
It started raining while he was quizzing the bartender, and now Steve can feel his jeans sticking to his legs as he slowly gets soaked. Old wounds ache, and he grits his teeth to push through the familiar pain, kneading at his thigh while he walks. His hair is plastered against his forehead, and the sand is squishy where it's gathered after having been blown up from the beach onto the boardwalk, tucked into every corner of the promenade.  
  
There’s a handful of people walking around, and some of the little shops are open, but it’s the off-season, so for the most part, the place is pretty dead. There’s a huge flock of seagulls attacking leftover food beside one of the benches, and Steve walks past them to lean over the bars that separate the edge of the wall from the rocks and the sand below. No one will hear them from here, and more importantly, no one will see Steve talking to himself.  
  
Beside him, Bucky is just walking, or gliding, completely unperturbed by the wind and rain that surrounds him.  
  
Steve takes the photograph out of his jacket pocket and flips it around to show Bucky.  
  
“It’s you, right?”  
  
“Holy shit,” Bucky whispers, clearly recognising himself, just as Steve notices that there’s something written on the back in sharpie.  
  
“ _James, and the wife_.” Steve reads aloud and Bucky’s head shoots up.  
  
“What did you say?” He asks, almost shouting, and Steve actually finds himself taking a step backwards until he’s pressed up against the bars with the sea at his back. He flips the picture around to show Bucky the handwriting, and the ghost frowns like he’s in pain.  
  
His hand reaches out a fraction, and his fingers hover over the image of him and a redhead grinning with their drinks held aloft.  
  
“Do you know her?” Steve asks, referring to the woman Bucky had shared this moment with.  
  
“Yeah,” Bucky nods, “I...she’s...argh,” he growls in frustration, turning around to face the sea, and throwing his arms out in annoyance. “I _know_ her, I can...I can feel it, I just can’t...Why  can’t I... _dammit!_ ”  
  
He storms off through the barriers, and onto the beach. He walks down past the moss-covered rocks and scattered broken bottles, over the sand, until he’s standing in the middle of the surf and screaming into the stormy waters across the horizon.  
  
Steve, not wanting to crowd the angry ghost, opts to climb over the rails, and just straddle them instead, swinging his right leg over to join his left, and sitting on the top of the blue bar overlooking the water. He watches Bucky vent his anger for a little while, before he looks down at the photo in his hands. _James_. Bucky’s name is James.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Steve says, feeling useless, when Bucky— _James_ —finally makes it back to shore, with his eyes downcast and his shoulders hunched. All they have is a first name, and it’s a fairly common one at that.  
  
“Sorry for what?” Bucky asks.  
  
“You need like…a spirit guide, or a shaman, or something, and all you get is me.”  
  
Bucky looks up at him then, gives him a calculating look and says, “you’ll do,” before looking away and ducking his head in what Steve thinks might be sheepishness.  
  
_Don’t get attached_ , says a nasty voice in the back of his head.  
  
_Too late,_ he thinks. _Too fucking late._

 

 

***

 

 

They walk over the boardwalk in comfortable silence, and when Steve looks down he notices his own long thin shadow being cast across the old slated wood, but at Bucky’s feet there’s nothing.  
  
“I like it here,” the ghost says, looking out across the choppy waters.  
  
Steve doesn’t follow his gaze. Instead he sees two scruffy-looking men hiding behind a dumpster, where there’s definitely money changing hands. In the distance the skeletal Cyclone rollercoaster looms from above, and behind them a woman laughs, her voice shrill and unexpected.  
  
Across the way, a group of children are kicking one of the arcade game stands that’s been left outside one of the closed vendors. They see Steve, and after having most likely mistaken him for the owner, they scarper. Steve keeps walking, but it’s just when they’re passing the game that the kids were abusing, that it comes to life.  
  
“ _Zoltar is here to give you the wisdom of the ancients, do with it what you will_ ,” the animatronic fortune teller says from inside of his glass prison and Bucky stops to take a closer look. Steve turns around to watch, just as the robot tilts his head in Bucky’s direction, jerks his hand in the general area of his crystal ball, and says, “ _Destiny is not a matter of chance_ —” Zoltar moves his head to where Steve is standing, “— _but a matter of choice_.”  
  
Steve shudders at the thing’s blank stare—painted glass eyeballs watch him as he moves. _Creepy robot puppet,_ he thinks unhappily.  
  
“That thing always used to creep me out as a kid,” he says to Bucky, while the machine churns out a small white card that will house Zoltar’s so-called prediction. Steve doesn’t pick it up, and Bucky can’t, so they walk away instead, content to be in charge of their own destinies.  
  
“We didn’t put any money in,” Bucky says after a few minutes of silence.  
  
“Those kids must’ve,” Steve says, shrugging.  
  
“Yeah, maybe. But why would the owner leave it switched on in the first place?” Bucky wonders, occasionally turning back around to check if the arcade game is predicting anyone else’s fate.  
  
“What? You think Zoltar was trying to tell you something?”  
  
“Well you _did_ say I needed a spirit-guide.” Bucky smirks. 

 

***

 

 

Their next stop is the address scribbled on the back of the matchbook, and they walk the few blocks until they get to the street name inscribed.  
  
“Look familiar?” Steve asks, as they stand outside of the house. The mailbox says ‘ _Ross_ ’ on it, and there’s an American flag swaying in the breeze from the porch. At least the rain has stopped.  
  
“Not really.” Bucky says, following Steve to the door. They ring the doorbell, and wait. A bushy-blonde moustachioed man exits the house next door—281 _6_ West 22nd Street—and Steve didn’t know people still wore bowler hats, but this man rushing past them in a hurry certainly manages to pull it off.    
  
“Steve, look.” Bucky says to get his attention once more as a man comes to the door of 2815.  
  
“Can I help you?” He asks, frowning at Steve’s obviously unfamiliar face at his stoop. The man’s hair is grey and his eyebrows are thick, and he’s tapping at the door with a great deal of impatience.  
  
“Hi,” Steve greets politely. “This might sound a little strange, but I was wondering if you knew a guy—he’s brunette, around five-nine—” Steve starts trailing off, squinting as he attempts to guess Bucky’s height.  
  
“I’m six foot.” Bucky corrects.  
  
“Sorry, _six-foot_ , and—”  
  
“Who are you?” The man barks suddenly, all of his confusion gone in one fell swoop as his impatience paves the way to barely disclosed panic. “Did my wife hire you?”  
  
“What?” Steve asks, backing away a step, and holding his hands out in surrender. “Sir, I don’t know—”  
  
“I knew she’d find out. Dammit. _Dammit_.” The man’s frowning now, and his eyes are darting back and forth as though he’s in search of a way out of his own head. His moustache twitches. “Whatever she’s paying you, I’ll double it!” He says to Steve suddenly, his voice almost hissing in his attempt to be both quiet and assertive. “Anything you want.”  
  
“I think we’ve got our wires—”  
  
“ _Thaddeus? Who’s there, darling?”_ A shrill voice calls from the back of the house, and “Thaddeus” closes the door a fraction.  
  
“That’s her,” he says frantically to Steve.  “Just come back around six, I’ll have a cheque ready.”  
  
And the door slams in his face. _“Don’t worry honey, it was just one of those idiot salesmen!_ ” Steve hears Thaddeus say through the closed door, and he’s too bemused by the entire exchange to even muster offence.  
  
“Wow.” He mutters, half to himself, and half to his ghostly shadow. “W-o-w.” He says again, smirking, at the assumed infidelity.  
  
“Oh come on, you don’t think I actually had sex with that guy, do you?” Bucky asks with an incredulous tone and a stunned expression. “He looks like a complete asshole.”  
  
Steve can’t resist. “I don’t know, _Buck_ , it sure looks that way to me.”  
  
“Buc- _ky._ It’s already only two syllables, you don’t have to make it one. Give me a little credit.”  
  
“Well, on the bright side, at 6pm I’m coming into some money!”

 

 

***

 

 

“Don’t you have something more important to be doing than wandering around the city with a ghost?” Bucky asks, mumbling somewhat as they walk, and Steve almost laughs. He’s spent the last few months wandering around the city with ghosts, the only difference is that Bucky _talks_.  
  
Steve thinks about the VA meeting he’s blowing off, and he’s sure Sam will ring him later but he’ll just have to deal with that when the time comes.  
  
“Maybe I was a slut.” Bucky mutters when they arrive at the subway station, following behind Steve, and going a much slower pace. “A lonely, home-wrecking slut.”  
  
If ghosts could scuff their feet, then Steve has no doubt that that’s exactly what Bucky would be doing right now. He looks dejected, and lost, and Steve has an idea of something that might cheer him up.  
  
“Come on,” he calls over, beckoning for Bucky to join him, and leading him across to another platform.  
  
“The Q?” Bucky questions when the train arrives. “Why are we getting the Q? The F-train takes us back to Brooklyn Heights.”  
  
But all Steve does is smile, and say, “you’ll see,” while he insists that Bucky sit on the right side of the subway car, by the window.  
  
The train’s brakes squeak as the Manhattan-bound subway car rattles on by towards its destination. It sways a little, and Steve looks over to Bucky. He’s sat beside him—or doing whatever you call it when ghosts appear to sit—and his head is tilted to one side, his body hunched towards Steve.  
  
If he were real—no that’s not the right word, he _is_ real, he’s right here—no, if he were… _physical_ , if Steve could touch him, he has no doubt that the man’s head would be resting on his shoulder right now.  Steve would be able to feel the heat of Bucky’s body through the material of his jacket. Their bodies leaning towards each other, as they journey forward.  
  
Steve smiles privately.  
  
There’s a woman sat at the back of the subway car, and she’s muttering under her breath. Occasionally she’ll twitch, and swat her hand in mid air, as though there were a person beside her pissing her off.  
  
Steve looks over at Bucky—who’s surprisingly quiet, for once, and he wonders if the woman across from them has her own ghost to contend with.  
  
The subway car rattles to the side, lurching into the turn, and Steve sways into the movement, effortlessly. It makes no different to Bucky, and they continue to sit there in silence, while Steve keeps an eye on his watch, and at the various stations the express service is passing. When they get to Dekalb Avenue, Steve tells Bucky to keep an eye out, and finally as they get to the abandoned Myrtle Avenue station, it starts.  
  
The zoetrope-like artwork flutters by in rapid succession, each panel creating the illusion of movement. Red and green shapes morph into blues and yellows, jumping out from the dark, painting their way through the tunnel.  
  
But Steve only has eyes for Bucky.  
  
He looks amazed, his eyes are wide, and his jaw has fallen open in awe. He’s transfixed, barely blinking as he watches the installation pass by, desperately focusing on each fluttering piece as the train rushes to its next station. Steve saw it years ago, his mother making sure to point it out to him when he was younger, and he’s seen it maybe a handful of times since. But seeing Bucky’s slack-jawed admiration, it’s like Steve’s seeing the artwork for the first time all over again—through Bucky’s eyes—and he has a newfound appreciation for the piece.  
  
Steve wishes he could take a photograph of Bucky. He wishes he could have this moment and bottle it. The spirit’s wonderment is contagious and Steve finds himself grinning from ear to ear until finally the _MassTransitscope_ ends, and the train journey returns to its monotony as they get closer to Canal street.  
  
“Thank you,” Bucky says, a little breathless, but completely genuine, and Steve can feel something ache in his chest. A kind of prickling in his bones to see Bucky’s gratefulness aimed in Steve’s direction. There’s a fluttering between his ribs.  
  
He feels warm, and full, and… _.it’s you_ , Steve thinks, as Bucky ducks his head, and looks back out the window at the snippets of the outside world now that the train is overground—staring at the zig-zagged beams flittering by, while the Brooklyn Bridge sits nestled in amongst Manhattan’s skyscrapers.  
  
_It’s you_.

   
 

***

 

 

“So what if I was a slut?” Bucky says, a little out of the blue as they exit the train, his thoughts once again focused on the possibility that while he was alive he might have been an escort. At least he has a more positive outlook about it now, so that’s a bonus. “There's nothing wrong with a healthy sexual appetite.”  
  
Steve goes to agree but Bucky doesn’t give him a chance.  
  
“And I look good right?” He says, looking down at himself.  
  
Steve looks up at Bucky and thinks, _yeah_ , he really does look good. He looks better than good. He’d been too surprised at the surrealness of it all to really notice in the beginning. The whole _ghost in my living room_ thing kinda took precedence, but now Steve can appreciate that Bucky looks _damn_ good. His dark skinny jeans fit him perfectly, and the top button of his grey shirt is undone. His leather jacket looks well-worn but smart, and his hair has been styled into a slight coiff.  
  
Steve finds it difficult to respond, the lump in his throat has grown all of a sudden and he coughs to clear it.  
  
“Uh, yeah. Yeah, I guess.”  
  
“I bet I was one of those high-end escorts.” Bucky continues, none-the-wiser at Steve’s plight. “The classy kind—"  
  
“Oh my god, _Andrew_!” A woman shouts suddenly, and Steve spins around in time to see a man fall backwards onto the train tracks. There’s a chorus of gasps and exclamations as the few people on the platform surge forward.  
  
And Steve doesn’t think, he just _acts_. He leaps forward, briefly looking up at the dark black of the tunnel before jumping down onto the ground beside the unconscious man. Passers by rush closer to the platform edge and look down at them in shock.  
  
“Is he okay?” One of them asks, whilst someone else is comforting the screaming woman. Steve, meanwhile, tries to put his basic battlefield first-aid training to good use. He shouldn’t move the man incase he’s hurt his back, but the train’s due any second, and even though someone’s already running up the stairs to tell the people at the kiosk upstairs, there’s no telling if they’ll get there in time.  
  
He makes a snap decision and carefully hooks his arms underneath the stranger’s armpits and drags him over to the wall. He’s amazed they’ve both managed to avoid getting fried by the electrified third rail, and the hands of several good samaritans reach out to help pull the unconscious man up and out of harm’s way.  
  
But then there’s a bright, white light coming out of the black of the tunnel, and there’s an absurdly loud horn screaming out for attention. The floor shudders underfoot, the tracks vibrate and Steve can’t focus. He can’t move out of the way from the oncoming train because it’s not a train he’s seeing anymore. His field of vision narrows, and he’s not in the subway at all.  He’s on the other side of the world, hiding out in a cave, with a bullet in his leg, and the firelight at the mouth of his hideout means they’ve found him. His ears pop. _The enemy has found him_ . His radio’s shot to hell, and the rest of his unit is dead, and _shit,_ the blaze of the village with its acrid smoke is making it hard to breathe and—  
  
“STEVE!” Bucky yells desperately, and his voice, filled with desperate panic, manages to cut through the white noise surrounding Steve. His thoughts scatter, but he somehow manages to grab the wall, as at least four strangers pull desperately at his shirt from above and hurl him up and onto the platform at the last second. The express train rushes on by with a great screech and Steve is left heaving for air on the ground.  
  
“He’s not breathing!” A woman shrieks and for a second Steve’s confused because he can definitely hear his own desperate panting loud in his ears—before he realises that the woman isn’t talking about him. It’s the same woman who shouted for ‘ _Andrew_ ’ in the first place, and she’s crying on her knees whispering that she doesn’t know what to do, while the man Steve saved from getting hit by a train, is lying on the ground, unresponsive.  
  
“We need a doctor!” Someone says.  
  
“Call 911!” Another person shouts, but people are already on the case. At least four bystanders have their phones out, hovering, unsure what to do, and two teenagers have just run off in search of more assistance.  
  
Steve scrambles forward because the urge to help never really goes away. He knows CPR, and he’s had to apply more than his fair share of field dressings over the years—  
  
“Feel his chest.” Bucky says to the crowd, but only Steve can hear. _“Steve.”  
  
_ “What?”  
  
“His _chest_ ,” Bucky says with a far-off look that reminds Steve of his own reflection on his bad days. “Check and see if it’s bloated.”  
  
Steve frowns.  
  
“Do it!” Bucky hisses and Steve does. He pushes past the two strangers who are undoing the man’s collar to try and help him, and he gently presses his palms against the man’s chest.  
  
“Can you feel his ribs?” Bucky asks, wringing his hands in frustration.  
  
Steve shakes his head to reply to Bucky and the woman visibly panics. “Andrew, Andrew please,” she whispers having mistaken Steve’s response for hopelessness.  
  
“Does he feel bloated?” Bucky asks.  
  
“I think so,” Steve replies, and one of the onlookers says, “You _think_ what?”  
  
“What are you doing?” An MTA worker asks as she tries to catch her breath after running from her post. The two teenagers who went and got her are keeping their distance by the steps to the platform. Her name tag is hanging precariously from her shirt. It says her name is _Patricia_ and there’s a harried look about her that tells Steve she’s already radioed for assistance. He has a feeling it will be too late.  
  
“You need a sharp knife,” Bucky says, and his voice sounds different now—suddenly so sure, and confident, like this is the real Bucky that Steve’s hearing and seeing and everything else was just a cheap imitation. “And a bottle of vodka.”  
  
Steve frowns, looking up at the crowd, hovering close by. “I need a bottle of vodka,” He says simply, “And a sharp knife, _now_.” He says, adding the emphasis to illicit a response.  
  
“Open his shirt.” Bucky says as one of the strangers unhooks the swiss army knife from off of his keyring and hands it over to Steve.  
  
“Are you a doctor?” The worried woman asks, just as Steve is nodding his thanks to being handed the knife. She looks relieved, and so he doesn’t correct her assumption.  
  
“What’s wrong with him?” The MTA workers asks as Steve lifts up the man’s shirt as per Bucky’s instructions only to see surgical scars running down the length of the man’s abdomen. “He only had his six-month check-up a week ago.” Andrew’s companion goes on to say, her voice shaking, while her hands are holding her loved one’s head in her lap.  
  
“It’s a tension pneumothorax.” Bucky explains and Steve swallows the lump in his throat because he knows enough to know that’s not good.  
  
“Tension pneumothorax.” Steve replies to the woman, careful to keep his tone measured despite the anxiety that’s bubbling in his own stomach. His head’s still reeling from his earlier flashback and it’s taking all of his strength of will not to check out under the stress. He’s not sure exactly what triggered him a second ago—maybe it was just the combination of actively putting himself in danger to save another, the spike of adrenaline, the fear—but he can still feel the aftereffects taking their toll on his psyche.  
  
“Air is escaping out of the lungs and into his chest.” Bucky says as an explanation, and Steve dutifully repeats it back to the woman.  
  
“There’s a valve at the opening of the lungs,” Bucky tells Steve from where he’s now kneeling on the ground beside him. “If it doesn't close, then it constricts the lungs and compresses the rest of the organs. And you _really_ need that vodka.”  
  
Steve agrees.  
  
“Has anyone got vodka?” Steve asks again, but when he looks up the MTA worker and the teenagers are shaking their heads. An older woman is staring, a little transfixed. Three of the guys who helped pull Steve and the man to safety are doing the same, while the fourth is rooting through his weekend bag and muttering under his breath that he might have leftovers from the mini-bar stowed away.  
  
He produces two small bottles from out of his bag with a flourish, and an “A-ha!” before quickly thrusting them into Steve’s open palm.  
  
“I want you to feel for his ribs again.” Bucky advises, in a tone that reminds Steve of Sam. “A little bit lower, yes, right there. The spot between two ribs, can you feel that?”  
  
Steve nods.  
  
“Okay, you need to splash some vodka on it.”  
  
Steve does as he’s told even though he hates where this is going.  
  
“And now you need to get the knife, and make a small incision for the air to escape.”  
  
Steve stops. He bites his bottom lip, and wills the shaking in his hands to cease. He can feel beads of sweat trickling down his back, but he can’t shake the cold setting into his bones. _Get a hold of yourself, Rogers_ , he imagines Toro telling him. _Focus_ , Hammond agrees in his head. _You’re a good man,_ he hears Erskine say. _Get on with it_ , Naslund shouts.  
  
“You can do this,” Bucky voice cuts through them all, and he’s so close now, so so close. His voice is right in Steve’s ear, and he’s pointing his ghostly finger to the space over the man’s third rib. “Just press down, and make the cut.”  
  
Steve wishes he wasn’t surrounded by strangers watching his every move with bated breath, and he wishes the EMT’s would hurry the fuck up, or at the very least that there was a doctor on the platform.  
  
He looks at Bucky then, with his kind eyes and all of his confident knowledge of this procedure, and he thinks about how Bucky had acted after Steve had gotten into that fight in the alleyway. How he’d stared at Steve in the bathroom while he patched himself up. How he’d corrected his ministrations.  
  
Maybe there _is_ a doctor on the platform after all.  
  
“You’re doing great, Steve.” Bucky assures him before looking around and pointing to the teenagers. “Ask them for that straw, it’ll keep the wound open and let the air escape.”  
  
“I need a straw!” Steve shouts, assessing the man at his feet with his own basic knowledge of first aid in the field. He’s glad to see the teenagers react quickly—handing said straw over from out of their drinks cup.  
  
Without needing instruction, Steve douses the straw with vodka to try and sterilise it, and when Bucky prompts him to do so, he inserts the straw into the small hole he’s made. There’s an audible whoosh of air, and Steve watches, in muted shock, as the man’s chest starts moving and he inhales and exhales as normal.    
  
Steve tries to do the same. When, finally, the EMT’s arrive, he’s more than happy to back away and let them do their work.  
  
“Where are you taking him?” Steve asks them.  
  
“Metro-General.” Bucky surmises.  
  
“Metro-General.” The EMT replies.  
  
“Steve, I think—I think I'm a doctor.” Bucky says, breathlessly, like he’s having an epiphany, while the patient gets carted away. “I might have been a home-wrecking whore, but I saved lives!”  
  
Steve opens his mouth to reply, he wants to respond, but no sound comes out. His head’s fried, and the strangers are all patting him on the back, and he can feel himself pulling away.  
  
There’s blood on his hands, the stranger’s blood is crusting underneath his fingernails. It’s barely anything—and god knows he’s seen worse, but everything’s bringing back memories that he knows he’s not equipped to handle. He closes his eyes for a moment and all he can see is what was left of his men. Hammond and Raymond and Naslund all dead at his feet. _Fuck._ His hands are shaking, and his vision’s starting to blur. He can’t do this.  
  
“Steve?” Bucky calls.  
  
He thought he was done with this.  
  
He makes it to street level, though he’s not sure how, and he stumbles away from the subway stop. He thinks Bucky might be following behind but he can’t be sure, he can’t focus.  
  
A car runs over a discarded water bottle that’s been sitting in the gutter for god knows how long, and the loud pop makes him flinch violently. He can feel himself unravelling, bursting at the seams, and his breath is getting shorter and shorter. He tries to remember a mantra that might keep him present, keep him here, but his grounding techniques and careful constructs are failing him and—  
  
Just like that, Steve checks out.

 

***

 

 

_By the way Toro, that’s some girl you’ve got waiting for you at home. Dammit Naslund, quit reading my emails you asshole. I’ll quit reading them when you quit leaving yourself logged in every time you use the goddamn—Both of you shut it, what part of covert op did you not get? Uh, the covert part? You want a slap, soldier? Sorry, Captain. That’s what I thought.  Uh guys, you better look at this. What is it? Shit, shit, shit, Toro, move! Get down! Get down! Hammond, hang on! No! I’ve been hit, I’ve been hit, this is Rogers to control, we need an emergency evac, Rogers to control do you read me, shit, shit, the radio’s gone. Toro, hold on, I can’t see a damn thing. Fuck._

 

 

***

  
  
  
  
When Steve comes back to himself, he’s not sure how much time has passed but he’s amazed to find that he actually managed to make it to a bench. Beside him, there's a homeless man, with a white beard peppered against his brown skin, and he's babbling a little under his breath, clutching desperately at the blue plastic bag in his hands.  
  
It’s raining again, and they’re both getting slowly soaked in the downpour. Steve’s leg aches fiercely around the long-healed bullet wound in his thigh, and he’s already clawing at his jeans, pushing his knuckles into the scar tissue to try and alleviate the pain that’s there.  
  
“Steve?”  
  
Steve turns around slowly, still a little dazed, to see Bucky drifting beside him, looking severely freaked out. He’s bone-dry, completely unaffected by the change in weather around him, but the confidence he had giving orders on the platform is almost completely gone.  
  
His hands are outstretched, hovering as if to touch, but completely unable to do so. Steve remembers Bucky telling him that without Steve, Bucky had worried that he didn’t exist, so being left alone, in the middle of a busy city, while the only person in the world that can see him is suffering through a dissociative episode probably wasn’t all that fun for him either.  
  
“Sorry,” Steve says and the man at his side stops babbling for a moment to pat Steve on the knee.  
  
“Happens to the best of us, soldier.” The stranger beside Steve says, mumbling somewhat, before he squeezes the plastic bag that he’s kept close to his chest, and leaves. Steve watches him go, and a part of him questions if he’s just another ghost roaming the streets for Steve to come across, but then a car horn blares when the man strays into the street, and he gives the cab-driver the finger.  
  
Bucky takes up the man’s place on the bench, and waits.  
  
“We—we should head to Metro-General,” Steve forces himself to say, after a few minutes of silence have passed, even though Steve wants nothing more than to crawl into a dark room, and stay there for several hours, if not several _days_.  
  
“It can wait,” Bucky says kindly, and Steve appreciates the gesture, but they’re so close to solving this stupid riddle, and they can’t stop now. Steve won’t do that to Bucky.  
  
“Thank you,” Steve says, genuinely, trying not to shiver in the rain as he pulls his body upright to a standing position despite the still fuzziness of his head. He feels like he’s been swathed in cotton and he’s pushing his way back to the surface. “But we both know that it can’t.”

 

 

***

 

 

When they get to the hospital, that confidence Bucky had earlier, the degree of certainty that Bucky showed  in the subway, starts to return.  
  
“I work here.” Bucky says with a tinge of awe in his voice, as though he can scarcely believe it himself.. He's spinning around in the middle of the emergency room at Metro-General hospital, almost on tip toes, staring at every cubicle and cart like they're made of gold. His memories are returning, and Steve can't help but smile at the blatant happiness in Bucky’s voice.  
  
“You did?”  
  
“That’s Jenny, and Kamala, and Peter,” Bucky says, pointing to various members of staff. “It's all coming back to me now.” Bucky says with more than a little bit of joy, and Steve leaves him to stare around the hospital while he steps over to the nurse at the desk and introduces himself.  
  
“There's Morita,” Steve hears Bucky muttering to himself still, “and Monty, and Grant and where’s Claire—?”  
  
“James?” The nurse at the desk says, clarifying the name that Steve had given her. Her ID badge confirms that she’s the _Jenny_ Bucky was muttering about a moment ago. “Do you mean James _Barnes_ ?” She asks, and that gets Bucky’s attention.  
  
“Barnes! Yes!” Bucky says, rushing over to join them. “I can’t believe I forgot that. That’s me, that’s my name!”  
  
“Yes,” Steve says, and Jenny looks wary now. Uncomfortable even.  
  
“Dr. Barnes….he’s…” she looks over to her colleague for help, before continuing diplomatically. “He’s not active on our staff right now.”  
  
“What?” Bucky asks. “What does that mean?"  
  
“What do you mean?” Steve asks, trying to remain polite with Bucky all but shouting beside him.  
  
“If you can wait just one moment, I’m just going to talk to my colleague.” Jenny says instead of answering the question.  
  
“Oh no, she’s using that tone.” Bucky realises, and Steve looks over in concern.  
  
“What tone?” He whispers, before pretending to cough to hide the fact that he’s talking to himself.  
  
“The _tone_ when you’re trying to find someone else to tell someone that their friend’s dead.”  
  
Steve watches as Jenny steps back away from her desk and over to where a doctor is making notes on his chart. They talk in hushed tones, and occasionally look over in Steve’s direction. He knows pity when he sees it. _Shit_ , this isn’t good.  
  
“Excuse me, sir?” Jenny says, heading back over to the desk, and picking up her phone, ready to dial. “I need you to go to the sixth-floor nurses station.”  
  
“But—”  
  
“Someone will be waiting for you.” The nurse assures him, and it’s a clear dismissal that Steve’s not stupid enough to ignore.

 

 

***

 

 

Steve hates hospitals. He hates how white everything is, like the building’s pretending that there aren’t hundreds of people dying inside of its walls right this second. The antiseptic smell puts his teeth on edge, and he’s reminded of his teenage years spending day after day visiting his mother while she clung on to life.  
  
The guys in his unit never made it this far.  
  
It’s not quite hell. Steve knows that. He knows what hell is. He’s been there, he’s felt it. He’s _tasted_ it, but he forgets all of that, and instead he focuses on the man in the white coat, who’s standing at the nurse’s station, waiting for him when he exits the elevator.  
  
The doctor’s mouth is set in a thin line, and there’s a sprinkle of grey in his bushy blonde moustache. There are laughter lines in the corners of his eyes, but his face looks solemn now. Steve recognises him, but he can’t think from where.  
  
“Dum-Dum,” Bucky whispers under his breath and Steve wonders if for a moment he’s talking about Steve. “He’s my mentor,” Bucky clarifies then instead. “They wouldn’t send us here unless it was bad.”  
  
“Mr. Rogers?”  
  
“Hi, yes.” Steve greets, shaking the hand that he’s offered.  
  
“Tim Dugan,” The doctor says, introducing himself a little differently to how Bucky had a second ago, and that’s when Steve remembers. _Bowler hat,_ he thinks, realising that it was house number 2816 scribbled on the matchbook, not 2815 after all.  
  
“It’s nice to meet you.”  
  
“I understand you’ve been asking about James Barnes?”  
  
“Yeah, _yes_ ,” Steve corrects himself to give a better impression. “Could you tell me what happened to him?”   
  
“First, I need to know what your relationship is with him.”  
  
“Tell him you're my boyfriend.” Bucky says suddenly, and Steve chokes unexpectedly. Bucky rolls his eyes. “He can't tell you anything unless he knows we're intimately connected. Just say it.”  
  
“We were...romantic with each other.” Steve says, cringing at his own choice of words, and Dugan’s eyebrows rise up to meet his receding hair line.  
  
“What do you mean?” Dugan asks, and Steve sincerely hopes he won’t have clarify in too much detail.  
  
“You know,” he says awkwardly. “Boyfriend and...boyfriend.”  
  
“Yeah, kid, I know what _romantic_ means,” Dugan says with a gruff tone that’s borderline cantankerous,  “but I gotta be honest, I have a hard time believing that.”  
  
“What? Why?” Bucky and Steve ask simultaneously.  
  
“Jimmy’s whole life was this hospital, the kid barely even slept between shifts,”  
  
“‘Was’? Did he say ‘ _was_ ’?” Bucky asks, only to be ignored.  
  
“I don't know of a single date he'd ever been on.” Dugan says.  
  
“We were fairly recent. I live in his apartment—”  
  
“ _Steve_ .” Bucky hisses, because dating someone is one thing, but there’s no way Bucky’s colleagues would have missed that he was _living with_ someone.  
  
“— _Building_.” Steve amends quickly. “I live in his apartment building.”  
  
“So you don’t know about the accident?”  
  
Steve’s mouth goes dry.  
  
This is it.  
  
And it’s strange because _obviously_ something bad had happened. Bucky is a ghost—that’s not exactly an everyday occurrence, and they’ve both known that from the beginning, but regardless of that, Steve feels like he’s seventeen again. It’s like he’s being sat down in a doctor’s office, and his mother is holding his hand while the doctor explains to him what _terminal_ means.  
  
It’s like he’s waking up in Camp Bastion’s military hospital, and no one will make eye contact with him, until eventually someone tells him he’s the only one who made it out of that clusterfuck alive.  
  
_You’re a lucky sonofabitch_ , Danvers had told him when she and Erskine had come to take him home. He sure as hell didn’t _feel_ lucky.  
  
And he’s feeling pretty shit right now too.  
  
“The accident?” He manages to whisper, and the hushed silence that follows is like the aftermath of an explosion: The ringing in his ears that makes him deaf to the screams, where everything is muffled, and out-of-synch.  
  
“Oh god, Steve,” Bucky says then, teetering by his side, “I...think I remember.”  
  
“I’ve...I’ve been away.” Steve says to Dugan, while his own breathing starts to stutter in his chest as though he can feel Bucky’s anxiety as keenly as if it were his own.  
  
“It was three months ago.” Dugan explains.  
  
“It was raining,” Bucky says, “and there was this taxi cab, and this blinding light…” He’s frowning now and there’s a look in his eyes that Steve has seen many times before. It’s the kind of horror that comes with a sudden and intense memory. The kind that leaves him throwing up in the sink at 4am on some random Tuesday, while the rest of the city is fast asleep.  
  
“I was away for a long time.” Steve says, letting his words trail off, while Bucky starts edging away from him, so much so that he’s floating—trailing down the corridor and further until he’s almost completely out of sight, like he’s _flying._ Steve wants to keep an eye on him, keep him close, he wants to follow but—  
  
“Mr. Rogers?” Dugan calls his for his attention, reaching out and touching his forearm. Steve flinches, and snaps to attention. Dugan takes it in his stride, and gives him a knowing look. Steve really hopes he doesn’t thank him for his service, he never knows what to say to that.  
  
“Do you want to see him?” the doctor asks instead, and Steve lets his shoulders sag a little in relief.  
  
“Yes,” he says, nodding, and hoping that he’ll come across Bucky on the way. “Thank you.”

 

 

***

 

 

Dr. Dugan leads him to James’ room in the hospital, and he doesn’t comment on the fact that Steve stays at least three steps back, clenching and unclenching his fists, and trying not to let his thoughts spiral. It’s been less than two hours since his flashback, and he’s amazed that he’s held it together for this long. He can’t see Bucky anywhere, and he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do.  
  
“I’ll be just outside.” Dugan says kindly, as he opens the door to let Steve in.  
  
The first thing he sees isn’t Bucky at all, but it’s a woman in blue scrubs, sitting beside a very still body on the hospital bed.  
  
“Sorry,” she says, when she realises she has company. She turns around to compose herself as she gets up. Her dark hair falls around her face, but Steve can see that her eyes are a little bloodshot, and her tawny-brown skin looks a little blotchy in places. “I was just...checking something,” the nurse tells Steve as she leaves, brushing past Dugan as the door shuts closed behind them.  
  
“She was crying.” Bucky says, and Steve looks over to the corner of the room where his ghostly companion is standing. He steps forward, closer to the bed. “Her name’s Claire. She’s a friend.” Bucky swallows. “She never cries. Ever. She’s—god, I did that. I did that to her.”  
  
Steve wants to comfort Bucky but he doesn’t even know where to start, so instead he looks down at the body on the bed. Bucky’s body. Bucky’s _actual, physical_ body.  
  
There’s a tube in his mouth, connected to a ventilator by the side of the bed that’s giving off a rhythmic hissing sound. Occasionally it pauses to let out a whoosh of noise, before it resumes its low hum of circulated air. There are more tubes and monitors running from Bucky’s body and over to the nearby machines and there’s an IV stand with multiple bags with different coloured labels hung up behind the heart monitor that’s beating slow.  
  
Bucky’s spirit is fidgeting, but his body is eerily still on the bed. His hair lies flat against the stark white pillows, and his skin looks pale and sunken. It’s almost comical that the ghost standing beside Steve has more colour in his cheeks than the living body lying prone on the hospital bed.  
  
“You’re not dead,” Steve whispers, like he can hardly believe it’s true. “You’re alive, Bucky, you’re alive.”  
  
But Bucky doesn’t share Steve’s enthusiasm in the slightest.  
  
“I could feel my heart...beating, like I was being drawn to my body, but, Steve, I’m in a coma, this isn’t….this isn’t good.”  
  
“Well it’s way better than dead!” Steve argues. In fact, there’s barely any evidence of an accident at all. There are faint pink lines on his left arm that must have been from deeper cuts, all stitched up and now healing anew, but that’s it. Any bruises he might have had from the impact have long since faded, and if it wasn’t for the ghost hovering beside him, or the endless streams of medical tubing, then Steve would think Bucky was just sleeping.  
  
“There’s no scarring. You look—you look handsome,” Steve says, before looking away to hide his own blushing cheeks.  
  
“That’s not the point, Steve. _Three months_ , that’s a persistent coma.”  
  
“So do something.” Steve suggests, with a kind of out-of-character level of optimism he’s just not used to. “Jump back in.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Jump back into your body! Or, I don’t know, you’re the doctor. Do something. You need to put yourself back together again.”  
  
“I’m not Humpty-Dumpty—”  
  
“Could’ve fooled me.”  
  
“You’re a real punk you know that.” Bucky sighs. “Maybe,” he starts to say, before hopping up onto the bed and lying back onto _himself_ . For a moment, Bucky’s spirit is gone, and all Steve can see is the patient on the bed. One of the machine’s monitoring Bucky’s vitals blips for a second.  
  
“Something's happening!” Steve shouts. “I think it’s working!”  
  
Bucky’s spirit pops out of his body for a second, sitting upright while his body stays lying down. “Yeah?” He asks, unconvinced, as he checks the read outs for himself, before lying back. “Let me try again.”  
  
“Focus,” Steve says, as if he’s been in this situation before, when really he’s just going through every single ghost movie in his head to see if he remembers anything like this happening. Swayze went towards a bright light in the end, but then he was definitely dead, so that’s not helpful. Didn’t Casper’s dad make a machine for this kind of thing? _Focus, Rogers_ , a voice in the back of his head says, that sounds eerily like his old CO.  
  
“Really hold onto your body.” He says to Bucky, cringing at his own useless instructions.  
  
"I'm not sticking.” Bucky grumbles, before sitting up again, and standing, separated from his body once more. “It's like I'm no longer connected to this body.”  
  
“Okay, alright, turn around, I just want to try something.” Steve says, as Bucky faces the window ledge that’s covered in flowers and get well soon cards. He takes a hold of Bucky’s limp hand, and he rubs his thumb over the pale skin there.  
  
Bucky, still looking away from his body, looks down at his hand suddenly.  
  
“You felt that,” Steve says a little triumphantly. “See you are still connected to your body. You said it yourself, you were drawn here. This has to mean something.”  
  
“My hand tingled,” Bucky confirms, “but, I couldn’t feel Claire...and Steve, the monitors... they don’t agree.”  
  
“Machines don't know everything.” Steve argues.  
  
“Everything in my training tells me they do.” Bucky rebuffs.  
  
“Then how are we having this conversation? How are you here, if you’re there—” he points to Bucky’s body, before gesturing back to his spirit. “How can any of this be happening?”  
  
“I don't know!” Bucky says with a sudden intensity that reminds Steve of the angry ghost Bucky had been when they had first met. The room certainly feels colder, and Bucky’s eyes look darker for just a second before the fight leaves him looking exhausted and wan.  
  
“Mr. Rogers?” Dr. Dugan interrupts, poking his head around the door. “I'm sorry, I have an appointment, and I can't leave you here unattended.”  
  
“Can I just have a couple more minutes, please?” Steve asks, terrified that he won’t manage to blag his way back in a second time. “I’m saying goodbye.”  
  
“Of course.” Dugan says, looking a little sad, and Steve thanks him as he’s left alone with Bucky again. The ghost in question has moved over to the windowsill, where there’s a collection of drawings propped up next to get well soon cards, and a teddy-bear clutching a fluffy red heart that’s woefully anatomically incorrect.  
  
“My niece must have made these things for me.” Bucky says, admiring a few of the drawings.  
  
“Wow, that's an amazing likeness.” Steve remarks, jokingly. “Not sure I remember the metal arm though?”  
  
Bucky laughs. “Her dad and I dressed up as Terminators last Halloween,” he explains. “She loved it.”  
  
“And the hair?” Steve asks.  
  
“I cut it.”  
  
“Shame.”  
  
“Oh yeah? You like the grunge look? Few more months in this coma, and that’s what you’re gonna get.”  
  
Steve winks, before spotting a collection of photobooth strips inside of a photo frame propped up alongside the well-wishes. In them James, and the same redhead from the photograph at the bar are wearing party hats, and pulling funny faces.  “Oh hey, look at these,” he remarks, point to them, and Bucky smiles.  
  
“This was the frame on my nightstand,” Bucky says. “Natasha must have brought it here."  
  
“You look great.”  
  
“Yeah, and now look at me.” Bucky’s melancholy has returned, and any hope he might have felt when he and Steve were wandering around Brooklyn in search for answers, has long since passed. “These levels aren't changing, Steve. If anything, they're decreasing.”  
  
Dr. Dugan knocks at the door once more. “Mr. Rogers,” he says, wary to interrupt from the doorway. “I’m sorry, I really need to be going”  
  
Steve nods, and squeezes Bucky’s palm on the bed one last time. “I have to go,” he tells Bucky’s spirit, while pretending, for Dugan’s sake, that he’s talking to the still body on the hospital bed. “I’ll wait for you.” He promises, meaning downstairs, but to anyone else it must sound like a declaration of love.  
  
_Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad_ , Steve thinks to himself as he goes to leave. Bucky follows him out, and even if it’s just to walk him to the door, like the end of an incredibly weird date, Steve will take it. He’s actually grown quite fond of the ghost, truth be told.  
  
Steve thanks Dr. Dugan again for his time, and he’s about to make a beeline for the elevators, when Bucky shouts out, “Kate!” with a huge grin that fills up his entire face. Steve hangs back, and watches as Bucky’s spirit runs towards a little girl hiding behind her mother’s leg. The girl looks up from her shy fidgeting, but otherwise doesn’t respond. If anything, she just ends up hiding further behind her mother, which is when Steve squints, and realises that the mother is Natasha. Bucky’s redhead. She’s here, and she’s talking to a different doctor about James’ condition, and Bucky doesn’t look happy at all to have noticed.  
  
Not wanting to have to explain his presence further, Steve manages to hover close by, grabbing water from the cooler near the nurses’ station, and picking up a magazine to hide behind, as he sits in the chair closest to the small family in the waiting area, and eavesdrops.  
  
“Mrs. Barton,” Steve hears the doctor say in a way that indicates that he’s been talking with her for some time. “James was a senior resident here, and we’ve taken some extraordinary measures to make him feel comfortable these last three months.”  
  
“Kate, sweetie, don’t put that in your mouth.” Nat says distractedly, pulling the small piece of lego the little girl had somehow managed to acquire out of her little fingers. “Sorry, you were saying?” She says, turning back to the doctor.  
  
“That’s Brock Rumlow,” Bucky tells Steve, as if he could read his mind, whispering even though there's really no need. “I guess he got my job.”  
  
“This is hard to say, but when we come to work here, we’re asked to sign release forms.” Rumlow continues, and he's putting on the perfect show of a sympathetic practitioner but Steve knows a bullshitter when he sees one and Bucky’s bristling at every word he hears.  
  
“Did you know James’ opinion about artificially prolonging life?” Rumlow asks, and suddenly Bucky’s concern becomes very apparent.  “He was against it.” The doctor continues, and Nat flinches a little at the abrupt words.  
  
“Shit,” Bucky mutters, and Steve lowers the trashy tabloid down a fraction in time to see a pained look flash across Natasha’s face.    
  
“Okay but that was before.” Bucky whines. “I’m obviously for it _now._ ”  
  
“Honestly, most in our profession feel that way.” Rumlow continues.  
  
“Not me!” Bucky reasons. “I'm perfectly happy! Come on, Nat, I’m right here.” Bucky strides forward, away from Steve, to be closer to the redhead.  
  
“But there's still some brain activity, isn't there?” Nat asks, and she's gently rubbing her daughter’s small hand as though it were a talisman, grounding her. Kate, as perceptive as she is, squeezes her mother’s hand back in comfort.  
  
“People have woken up from this kind of coma before, right?” Nat says, more deliberately this time.  
  
“Yes! All the time!” Bucky agrees.  
  
“Not on any record that I've found.” Rumlow responds, and he gives Nat a patronising smile.  
  
“Of course they have,” Bucky says, frustratedly. “They must have! Otherwise, what am I even doing here?”  
  
Steve keeps watching, wishing desperately that he could intervene, but he knows that getting carted off to the looney bin would be counterproductive at this juncture. All he can do is track the crestfallen look as it crosses Natasha’s face, and hope that Bucky will get the happy ending he craves.  
  
“Mrs. Barton, due to the circumstances, we won't take any terminal action without your explicit approval. Now, I've prepared this paperwork—”  
  
“Nat, do _not_ sign those!” Bucky says, “I'm _here_! I swear I didn't leave you, I didn't break our promise, Nat, please!” Bucky pleads, standing in front of Natasha’s face now, willing her just to see him for one second.  
  
“—if you decide to sign—”  
  
“I'll think about it.” Nat says, as she starts to move in the direction of Bucky’s room, and Rumlow follows her.  
  
“Nat, I'll baby-sit more, I swear! I’ll look after the dog—” Bucky tries reasoning.  
  
“We sometimes find that it's easier not prolong the inevitable.” Rumlow says.  
  
“—not the cat though, no one’s that desperate.” Bucky says, still bargaining.  
  
“Think about what James would want—” the doctor says then.  
  
“I said I'd think about it!” Nat snaps at Rumlow with an icy tone and once again Kate ends up hiding behind her mother’s leg.  
  
“Thank you, Nat.” Bucky whispers, watching as they head off in the direction of his hospital room.  
  
“You okay?” Steve asks, whispering and trying not to move his lips. Bucky doesn’t answer, and he doesn’t look away from the retreating forms of Natasha and Kate as they walk down the corridor in the direction of Bucky’s room.  
  
Steve decides to do some prompting of his own. “Go with them,” he suggests, and Bucky nods numbly.  
  
“Thank you for getting me here, Steve.” He says, with a little more finality than Steve was expecting.  
  
This is far from over, and now they have the added pressure of a deadline to contend with, but Steve can tell that right now Bucky wants nothing more than to just be with his family, even if they don’t know he’s even there.    
  
“Want me to wait downstairs in the lobby?” He asks, but Bucky shakes his head with a teary look in his eyes.  
  
“No, no, that's, that’s nice but you should… you can go. Thank you though.”  
  
“It was my pleasure.” Steve says, as though it hadn’t involved a particular nasty post-traumatic-stress response on his part. “Are you sure you don't want me to wait? It just feels weird leaving you here alone.  
  
“Yeah, I just want to be with them, y’know? And, well, I guess, _me_.” Bucky says. “But I’ll find you,” he promises.  
  
Steve hates goodbyes, so he takes comfort in the fact that this isn’t one.

 

 

***

 

  
  
_“I hate this.”_ Steve hears one nurse say just as he walks past their station on his way out. _“He finally gets a life,”_ she continues, _“and then…”_ Steve doesn’t hear the rest of that sentence—she has moved too far away. He wonders if they heard him talking to himself a moment ago. He hopes not. He presses the button for the elevator.  
  
_“You know what? That guy was cute.”_ He hears someone else remark and he can feel the involuntary blush start with abandon. They obviously don’t know that he can hear them.  
  
_“At least James got a chance to hang with him for a little while.”_ Another nurse says, a man this time, sounding a little morose. Steve stabs at the elevator button again. _Come on_ , he thinks, _come on._ Steve hates that they’re talking about Bucky behind his back, and a part of him wants to call out to his ghostly companion just so he can eavesdrop in on them, but he doesn’t want to look like a complete nutcase.  
  
_"Yeah. It would'a been awful if he'd gone through his whole life not knowing—”  
  
_ “Mr. Rogers!” Someone calls out suddenly, and Steve turns around to see Claire, the nurse from Bucky’s room, walking towards him. Her shout has interrupted the stream of gossip, and the nurses scatter. Judging by the look she’s sending their way, Steve gathers that Claire did it on purpose.  
  
“Sorry about them.” She apologises once she’s close, but Steve just shrugs. “They’re good people,” she tells him, “they just like to gossip.” She looks more composed than she had earlier. Her eyes look clearer.  
  
Steve nods, and presses for the elevator again. It must be close now.  
  
“I am glad he found someone, though.” Claire says and Steve’s neck starts to feel hot. “Dugan told me you and James were together? Figures that he’d keep that one quiet. I’m sure James knew you were there.”  
  
_If only you knew the half of it,_ Steve thinks.  
  
“Do you think he’ll be okay?” Steve asks thinking about Bucky’s comments to the contrary, and Claire smiles.  
  
“He’s stubborn, and he’s made it this far,” she says. “Sometimes the ones that make it through...they just need to know that someone’s there, waiting for them.”  
  
“I wish there was more I could do.” Steve says honestly, because Bucky deserves the chance to see this through, and not that he’d ever admit it, but Steve’s still looking for his own atonement, and a part of him can’t help but think, that if he can save Bucky, then he can save himself.  
  
“Careful, Rogers.” Claire says, as if she can read his mind, when the elevator finally makes it to their floor. Steve steps inside, as Claire finishes. “Guilt makes people do stupid shit.”  
  
“No kidding.” Steve responds in a deadpan voice.  
  
The elevator doors close, and Steve’s alone once more.

 

 

***

 

 

Outside of the hospital, Steve starts the long walk home, and by the time he makes it to the Brooklyn Bridge the sun has started to set between the high-rise buildings at his back. He can’t bear the thought of the empty apartment, so he lingers on the stairs instead.  
  
Saving the man’s life in the subway, finding Bucky, _leaving_ Bucky. It’s all catching up to him now, and he’s finally on the come-down from the adrenaline high. He’s crashing fast, and the hollow feeling in his stomach is spreading up into his chest, like a bubble of air constricting his airway, and crushing his lungs.  
  
But then he hears soft music playing when he walks by Apartment C again, and before he knows what he’s doing he’s knocking at the door.  
  
“Oh hello,” a little old woman, who must be Margaret Carter, says from the doorway while a waft of warmth wanders into the hall. “Can I help you?” She asks, with a distinctively British accent.  
  
“Hi, I just moved in upst—”  
  
“Oh!” She says before he can continue. “You must be Steve! I’m Peggy, Peggy Carter. Won’t you come in?” She invites. The strong scent of peppermint drifts over to him, and keeps him in the present. He lets out a little sigh and nods gratefully while following her into the apartment.  She bids him to sit down in the lounge, while she toddles away for a moment, leaving Steve to take in his surroundings.  
  
There’s a chiming clock on the wall and it’s shaped like a decorative plate, with small dashes instead of numbers and delicate flowers carefully painted all around its edge. The furniture is plush and soft, while the carpet’s pattern is loud with asymmetrical patterns in deep golds and reds. The room smells a little musty. Steve realises it was Peggy herself that smelled like peppermint, and he looks over to the kitchen where she’s disappeared to.  
  
“I’ll just wait for the kettle to boil,” she says as she comes back in to join him. “Now T’Challa tells me you’re interested in James?” Peggy asks directly, and Steve balks at the words, before he remembers that he was going door-to-door asking questions, and that’s what she’s referring to rather than his growing affection for the ghost haunting his apartment.  
  
Any response Steve might have given, however, is cut off by a sudden awful screech that screams throughout the room. Steve can’t help but flinch at the sound, and he jumps up off of the sofa, with a wild look in his eyes. Peggy waits a moment, her smile a little sad, before getting up herself, and shooing Steve back down.  
  
“No, no, I’ll get the tea.” She says, with a small smirk, as if that was the real reason Steve had found himself standing to attention. Her look of understanding tells Steve that she knows otherwise, but he’s grateful all the same. She reaches down to give his hand a squeeze, and she presses her handkerchief into his palm before busying herself in the kitchen once again.  
  
There’s that peppermint smell again. It grounds him, and he takes a deep breath, before he starts cataloguing everything around him again.  
  
There’s an array of pill containers on one side of the desk, and another pillbox labelled with the days of the week next to that. There are papers stacked neatly in the corner, underneath an ornate lamp that casts a soft orange glow throughout the sitting room. The curtains are open but the day’s light is already waning. The bureau is clearly full—the old wooden door is bent to accommodate whatever’s inside, but it is also, quite obviously locked. There’s a selection of small ornaments on the table. He sees a small mouse in a little pink dress, and there’s at least one pair of glasses on every surface, each accompanied by a stack of books.  
  
Her mantle is full of photographs—some in colour, some in black and white. There are children of various ages, smiling. And there’s an older looking picture of a soldier in uniform smiling with an arm around a much younger Peggy. In the corner, someone has written _Margaret and Michael, Aug. 1939.  
  
_ Towards the back of the table there’s a picture of a larger group, mostly in uniform, some wearing labcoats, others in civvies, and Steve would swear blind that Tony Stark was grinning in the background of the sepia toned photograph. He realises it must be his father Howard, and he looks on in wonder. _Small world_ , he thinks.  
  
There’s a portrait of Peggy in her wedding dress, with her hair in tight curls, and little white flowers twisted into her veil. Beside her, her husband’s eyes are full of adoration, and Steve can’t imagine seeing someone look happier than they do. Beside them, there’s a bright coloured photograph, that’s clearly been taken more recently, and it has a toddler with light brown skin jumping towards the camera, her smile is wide. Steve can imagine what her loud giggles might sound like.  
  
“That’s my granddaughter Isobel.” Peggy says as she slowly sidles up beside Steve, who quickly takes the tray of tea and teacups out of her hands. “Oh thank you,” Peggy says gratefully. “You know, she’s almost thirteen now, would you believe. She was always Gabe’s favourite.” She sounds wistful now as she takes a seat, and Steve follows suit. “My husband.” She explains then. “It’s been almost three years since he passed.”  
  
“I’m sorry for your loss.” Steve tells her and she smiles in thanks. “How did you meet?”  
  
“I was an Agent with the SSR during the War. Our men were pinned for months, and we had to fight our way through a Nazi blockade, but we did it, and among the injured, was my dear Gabriel. He kept trying to talk to me in French, the fool.” Peggy’s eyes seem to sparkle at the memory, as she’s reminded of happier times. “He used to say I was his English-Rose. We were married a year later.”  
  
She shuffles forward in her seat to reach for the brewed pot. “I’ll be mother,” she says, as she pours the brown liquid into two china cups. The coasters are crocheted doilies, but Peggy is quick to point out that it was her mother that made them.  
  
“I don’t have the temperament for that sort of thing!” She tells Steve, as she hands him his cup of tea with a steady grip. “Take a biscuit,” she nudges, sprinkling a small amount of sugar into her own cup.  
  
Steve’s not sure what to make of the selection on the plate in-front of him, he doesn’t recognise any of the small snacks that he’s being offered, but he can’t help but think something special is being shared with him. There are a handful of small sponge cakes—square shaped, with a little bulb on top. Two of them are pink, and one of them is yellow, and they’re decorated with piped icing and sitting in white wrappers. Next to them is a small pile of brown sandwich biscuits with the word ‘bourbon’ stamped across them, and beside those, and closest to Steve is a yellow biscuit, etched with detailed swirls that surround a diamond shape in the centre.  
  
“Oh, go on,” Peggy insists when she sees him looking. “Have a Custard Cream. They’re good for dunking, unless you’re a purist. We’ll save the cakes for later.”  
  
Steve watches as she reaches for a biscuit, dips it into her cup of tea once, twice, and then takes a bite. She chews on the snack quite happily, and nods for Steve to do the same.  
  
She hadn’t asked how he might take his tea—not that Steve would really have had an answer—but it tastes perfect all the same, so she must have known something that he didn’t.  
  
“Is the tea alright?” Peggy asks, when she sees him take a sip, and when Steve nods she smiles knowingly. “I had a feeling you’d take it the same way as James.” She says, and isn’t that just the darndest thing?  
  
"Did you know him?”  
  
“Oh yes, such a sweet boy. You know his whole family used to live in that apartment? I’ve known him since he was a boy, and he’s always checking in on me, when he’s not running around like a headless chicken. Just like his father.”  
  
“His father?” Steve asks, feeling guilty that he’s able to access so much information without Bucky beside him.  
  
“Oh yes. He was a cardiothoracic surgeon at Mount Sinai. Wonderful man, he loved those children of his dearly, and James and him were always so alike.” Peggy takes another sip of her tea. “In temperament, that is, not looks. No, in looks, James certainly took after his mother, so did little Rebecca, and Winifred was so kind. A little dull, but then most people are until you get a few drinks down them!” Peggy says with a wink, before tilting her head back to let out a little cackle. Her curled hair tousles with the motion. “Oh, I don’t mean that.” She says. “She was a card, really. I do miss them.”  
  
“When did they…?”  
  
“Let’s see, James had just started University, so it would have been…gosh, eleven years ago in the spring.”  
  
Bucky would have been eighteen when he lost his whole family. Steve knows what that’s like.  
  
“So James was away when it happened?”  
  
“He wasn’t far. He was studying at Columbia, but he was living in the dorms. They were hit driving through an intersection. Awful. Rebecca was only twelve.”  
  
Steve wonders if those memories returned when Bucky made it to the hospital. He wonders if at right this moment Bucky is in his hospital room screaming at the void because the only person who can hear him is miles away, talking about him behind his back. He wonders if remembering is better or worse than forgetting, and what it must be like to have to re-experience that loss as a fresh cut rather than an old wound.  
  
“But that’s enough sadness for one evening. I’ll never get you back here at this rate.” Peggy says, in an attempt to get Steve out of the maze that is his own mind. “What about you, Steve? What brought you here?”  
  
“I wish I knew.” Steve says and Peggy just takes the vague response in her stride.  
  
“How are you finding civilian life?” She asks pointedly, and Steve should find it frustrating that so many people can read him like a book but he doesn’t, and the smile he gives her is completely and utterly self-deprecating.  
  
“Not so great.”  
  
“I’m sorry to hear that.”  
  
“For as long as I can remember, I just wanted to do what was right.” Steve says, in a rare moment of fragility. “I guess I’m not quite sure what that is anymore.”  
  
“So dramatic.” Peggy says, not unkindly. “But unfortunately, I know exactly what you mean. Different wars of course, but the sentiment is the same.” She puts her cup of tea down, and scoots close enough so that she can grab a hold of Steve’s writhing fingers in her own wrinkled grasp. “The world has changed, and none of us can go back. All we can do is our best and sometimes the best that we can do is to start over.”  
  
“I’m trying.” Steve tells her, because strangely enough, he desperately wants her to know that.  
  
“And that, my boy, is all anyone can ever ask of you.”

 

***

 

 

It’s late before Steve leaves Peggy and her wisdom behind. He bids her goodnight, and only agrees to take a cake tin full of biscuits home with him when she insists that they’d only go to waste otherwise. He doesn’t realise at first, but he still has her handkerchief clutched in his palm.  
  
“Are you here?” Steve calls out to the empty apartment when he unlocks the door, only to be met with silence. “Guess not.”  
  
It’s strange. He wanted to be alone for the longest time. He wanted to ostracise himself, he wanted to punish himself, and now that he’s succeeded, he hates it.  
  
But he resists the urge to grab a beer, and instead, he pours himself a glass of cold water, and he cooks himself an omelette with what little food he has in the fridge. He sets a table setting for one, and he realises that it’s the first real meal he’s had that hasn’t consisted of potato chips and beer in months.  
  
He’s still savouring the taste of ham, cheese and egg, when the doorbell rings, and he shakes his head with amusement.  
  
“Why are you ringing the doorbell?” He calls out as he gets up to answer. “You can walk through walls!”  
  
He opens the door, expecting to see Bucky, but it’s his neighbour Lorraine that’s standing there.  
  
“Oh.” He says, disappointed. “Hi?”  
  
“I’m locked out,” Lorraine tells him. “I’m such a klutz. Can I use your phone?”  
  
She doesn’t wait for his answer, and she walks into the apartment and wanders around. She at least pretends to make a call to a locksmith, and when she complains that she’s thirsty, Steve does the polite thing and offers her a drink.  
  
She kicks her heels off, and sidles over to the window seat, making herself comfortable in seconds. She makes so much small talk that Steve wonders if she’s working from a cheat-sheet. He barely answers, and instead he does the washing, while Lorraine dogs his steps, playing with her hair suggestively.  
  
“So, is the locksmith on his way, or what?” Steve asks, interrupting her discussion on politics that’s so far mostly been with herself.  
  
“Oh! Yeah, the Super knows a guy—” she tells him offhandedly. “Hey, listen, can I use your bathroom?”  
  
“Uh, sure, it’s right down the hall.” Steve says.  
  
“Great!” Lorraine says a little too enthusiastically as she goes.  
  
Steve’s going over the different ways he can try to get rid of her when his ghost finally reappears.  
  
“Bucky! You’re back!” He exclaims, suddenly so much happier than he had been a moment ago. “Are you okay?” He asks, worried by the pained expression on the spirit’s face.  
  
“Nobody could hear me.” Bucky says, with a dejected tone of voice. “No one even knew I was there, and the whole time all I wanted to do was come back to you.” Bucky admits, and Steve tries to ignore the butterflies flapping around in his stomach.  
  
_I feel the same—say it, say it before it’s too late.  
  
_ “God, I hate this, Steve. I hate seeing everyone hurting. They’re all miserable because of me.”  
  
“Hey, it’s not your fault.” Steve says sternly, but it makes no impact on Bucky’s misery.  
  
“You would say th—”  
  
“Hey Steve, can you come in here?” A sultry voice interrupts from the other end of the hall, and Bucky’s ears prick up visibly.  
  
“Am I interrupting?” He asks, sounding a little incredulous to Steve’s ears.  
  
“What? No! She just got locked out.” Steve explains hurriedly.  
  
“Really? That’s the excuse you’re going with? Whatever, Steve, it’s fine, don’t let me stop you from getting laid.”  
  
“No, you don’t get it, she just needed to use the bathroom.”  
  
“Pretty sure that came from the bedroom.”  
  
“What?” Steve spins around just as Lorraine decides to poke her head out of the bedroom door. Steve can only see her upper body but she’s definitely naked from the waist up if not completely. How did he miss that?  
  
“Hey c’mere,” she calls. “I want to show you something.”  
  
“Oh I bet you do.” Bucky says with an eye-roll. “You sure didn’t waste any time.” He says to Steve.  
  
“Bucky, I swear, I had no idea that she was—”  
  
“Naked? On your bed? Really, you had _no idea_ ?” Bucky doesn’t sound impressed, infact, he sounds downright angry.  
  
“No, I—I didn’t!”  
  
Bucky squints, and then waits, and the silence stretches on for an eternity until he says, “Oh my god, you're wondering what she looks like, aren’t you?”  
  
“No, I'm not.”  
  
“Oh come on, not even a little?”  
  
“Well, not enough to go look!” Steve says defensively and Bucky’s laugh is dry and awful to Steve’s ears. It sounds nothing like the joyful noise he’s heard previously.  
  
“Tell you what, I'll do a little recon for ya.”  
  
“Buck, come on, don't!”  
  
“Hey, what are friends for? And I can be objective. I’m a doctor, remember?”  
  
“Are you talking to someone?” Lorraine asks, edging out of the doorway and confirming that she is indeed completely naked before Bucky even has the chance to check. “Look,” she says. “I'm sorry if I'm coming on a little strong. That's just my style.” She explains, and honestly, Steve has no idea where to even _look_.  
  
She steps into the hall, making her way over to Steve. “I hear you sometimes, up here, by yourself, and I just figured, _maybe he's lonely_. I know I am.”  
  
Steve’s watching Bucky, and Bucky’s watching Lorraine, but the anger is dissipating, and something sad is replacing the expression across the ghosts features.  
  
“Is it wrong for me to want to touch someone?” Lorraine asks, and Steve and Bucky both look at each other for a moment. “Is it wrong for me to want to be close to someone?” She continues, “to feel a warm body next to mine?”  
  
If she keeps describing all of the things Steve desperately wants with the one man he can’t have, he might explode.  
  
“Steve, just do it.” Bucky says suddenly, even though it looks like it pains him to say it. He looks disappointed and sad, but more than that, he looks _hurt_. Betrayed even. “Go ahead, be with her. It's what you both want, right?” Bucky keeps his eyes downcast now, and his whole appearance looks deflated. Lost, and lonely.  
  
“No, Bucky, it isn't—”  
  
“Are you alright?” Lorraine asks, watching as Steve continues to talk to himself. “Do you want to take some kind of medication first? It's cool if you do.”  
  
“Steve,” Bucky says, and just like on the subway platform, his calm and steady voice cuts through the white noise. It’s like their souls are twinned, their connection is solid, but Bucky is pulling away, and the invisible tether between them is frayed and worn. “It's okay,” Bucky insists, as he plays the martyr. “ _Really_ . She’s beautiful, and she's right here in front of you. You can actually _be_ with her. I’m just...I’m just in the way.”  
  
“No, you’re not!” Steve says as Bucky turns away from him. “You’re not in the way, Bucky, please, don’t—”  
  
Bucky disappears.  
  
“—go.”

 

***  

 

 

Steve doesn’t bother with any niceties or tactical diversions this time. He silently hands Lorraine her clothes from where she’s discarded them on the floor of Steve’s bedroom, and he asks her to let herself out, before searching the apartment for Bucky.  
  
When he comes up empty, he heads to the roof.  
  
“That was quick.” Bucky says sullenly, when Steve finds him there, shuffling his feet as if to kick at the gravel that’s scattered on the ground—but his foot flies straight through.  
  
“Come on, Buck, nothing happened.”  
  
“What'd you say to her?”  
  
“That I was seeing someone.” Steve says, with a smirk.  
  
Bucky starts at that, lifting his head up suddenly and spinning around to face Steve. “Really?”  
  
“Well, I didn't mention that I was the only person who could.” Steve says, trying to cajole a smile out of Bucky. If they could touch, Steve would nudge him in the ribs. If they could touch, Steve would reach out and grab his hand. If they could touch, Steve would thread his fingers through his hair and pull him in close for a kiss. If they could...  
  
“You know, I haven't…” Steve starts to say, but stops, and breathes first. “I haven’t really been with anyone since I first shipped out.”  
  
“Really?” Bucky sounds surprised, and Steve takes that as a compliment.  
  
“Sam—my friend, he even set me up on these blind dates. This one german guy kept sneering at the waitress, and then this other girl told me she was a nurse but that turned out to be a lie. I skipped out on the last one. Too much hassle.”  
  
“I know the feeling. At least, I think I do.” Bucky nods.  
  
“Before I left, I just thought it wasn’t fair, you know? Asking someone to wait, and then after the— _after_ , it was hard enough to even get up in the morning. Even when I started painting and going to therapy, I still couldn’t….I couldn’t do that to someone else.”  Steve sighs. “I don’t remember most of what happened. It just...it comes back in these flashes. One minute everything was fine, and then the next thing I know I’m pinned down, I’m bleeding and...everyone else is…” Steve lets out a frustrated sound then, like he’s re-living his own futility over and over again. “I couldn't do anything to help them. I was useless.”  
  
“What were they like? Your unit, I mean.” Bucky asks, changing the subject slightly to steer Steve clear of the inherent trauma, and the triggers within.  
  
“Assholes,” Steve says, before barking out a wet laugh. “They were complete and utter fucking assholes, and they’d never let you forget anything. I remember we were helping out these villagers, and there were so many kids running around and the boys were cursing all over the place, and I mean, I say fuck as much as the next guy, but these kids were just eating it up.” Steve’s smiling in the memory. “And I yelled out ‘ _language_ ’ and man, the guys ribbed me for weeks.”  
  
Bucky smiles.  
  
“Suddenly I was Grandpa Rogers. They made me this zimmerframe out of faulty tubing. They thought it was _hilarious_.” Steve actually laughs a little at the memory, it’s been a long time since he was able to do that, and it’s nice to talk about them like he’s not just reading a eulogy. “God, I miss them.” He says.  
  
“I’m sorry, Steve.” Bucky tells him, and he appreciates the sentiment, he doesn’t bristle at it like he sometimes has before.  
  
“I made sure I could go to their funerals. Toro was the first, pretty much had to go straight from the airport, and his wif—his _widow_ , Ann, she was there, and she wouldn’t even look at me. She couldn’t. His dad shook my hand, asked me how I was, and I kept thinking any second now he’s gonna know it was my fault. Any second now he’s gonna hit me, but at the end of the service he just asked me if I had enough cab fare for the ride home. I think that helped in the beginning. That he was kind to me. I went to all the therapy sessions I was supposed to go, I even went to group, tried dating, and I saw Ann. And she was so angry, and I didn’t know how to fix that, and we were in the middle of this grocery store in Flatbush and she’s screaming that I killed her husband, that I ruined everything.  
  
“And it’s like I thought, I thought well if she could see through my disguise then what was the point in pretending? What was the point in talking, or painting when their bodies were just rotting in the ground?”  
  
“You live.” Bucky says quietly, but clearly speaking from his own experiences of loss. “You honour their sacrifice, the choices that made who they were. You respect that and you keep going.”  
  
Steve looks up at Bucky, and they share a knowing look. “You know, I went to see Margaret Carter today, in Apartment C.”  
  
“Is she okay?” Bucky asks, suddenly concerned, so he clearly remembers her now.  
  
“She’s fine, I promise. She made me tea.”  
  
“She does that,” Bucky says fondly. “Did she give you cake or cookies?”  
  
“Both!” Steve says grinning, and Bucky pretends to look impressed. “She told me about your family,” Steve says carefully. “I’m sorry, Buck.”  
  
“It’s okay, it was a long time ago.” Bucky says, walking over to the edge of the roof, and staring at the Manhattan skyline and the small wall that had perplexed Steve when he first saw it. “You know I lived here my whole life? I was so excited to get away to the dorms in college, but all I did was miss it.” He looks away, lost in thought.  
  
“When they died, I rented the place out. I couldn’t face it, you know? I shared the spare room with Bec, I couldn’t…” He clears his throat before he continues. “So I stayed with Natasha and Clint in this shitty six-story walk up in Bed-Stuy, and as soon as I moved back, it just felt _right._ Like…”  
  
“Starting over.” Steve repeats, remembering Peggy’s sound advice. “Natasha wouldn't really sign those papers, would she?” Steve asks, suddenly concerned that he’s about to lose someone else.  
  
“I don't know. I hope not, but...she’s just trying to do what she thinks is right.” Bucky says, looking up at the blinking lights of the Manhattan skyline shining in the distance. “We were close before my family died, same school, same college, but afterwards she was my rock. I honestly think I’d be dead if it wasn’t for her. It got... _dark_.” Bucky says, and Steve understands what he means emphatically.  
  
“At the hospital, you told her you hadn’t broken your promise.”  
  
“It’s stupid,” Bucky says, “but she made me promise we wouldn’t leave each other behind. We were both orphans, but I guess it wasn’t exactly a realistic promise. Especially now. As far as she knows I’m already gone…” Bucky’s voice trails off with a sigh. “The papers won't even matter if I don't wake up soon. My brain activity is decreasing every day.  
  
“Well I didn’t want to say anything,” Steve smirks, jokingly, and Bucky makes as if to hit him. His hand soars straight through.  
  
“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” Bucky says with a tired smile. “Did you say you used to paint?” Bucky asks, as though having only just processed the particulars of Steve’s words from earlier. Steve nods. “That’s nice,” Bucky continues. “You know, whenever I used to feel like shit as a kid, I’d come up here. My mom used to curate work for some of the private galleries in Midtown, and I remember she used to balance canvases on this wall, and the city would be their backdrop. And I used to sit here for hours just staring at the art, and it always used to calm me down. Art, and the sea, they’re the only thing that can get me out of my own head.”  
  
He looks back at Steve.  
  
“That’s why the art in the subway meant so much to me. It’s like you knew before I even had to tell you, you knew.”  
  
Steve had had a feeling then, and now he has another idea that he thinks will do them both some good.  
  
“Come on, I want to show you something.”

 

 

***

 

 

“I haven't actually been here in awhile.” Steve explains as he leads Bucky to their destination in Williamsburg in the early hours of the morning. The graffiti on the brick outside is elaborate and distinctive, and there’s a huge steel door stopping them from getting any further, which Steve is currently approaching.    
  
“Are we breaking and entering?” Bucky asks warily, and Steve laughs as he pulls a set of key from out of his jacket pocket and waves them in front of him.  
  
“Don’t worry, I’m not gonna corrupt you, besides, it’s always closed on a Saturday, so we’ll have the place to ourselves.” He says, laughing as he unlocks the door, and they enter the dark room.  
  
“Here it is.” Steve says as he switches on the lights. “You, uh, you said how much you loved art, and this is closer than the sea, so I thought...” Steve’s sentence trails off, but Bucky doesn’t seem to notice, he’s too enamoured with what’s in front of him.  
  
“What is this?” He asks breathlessly, as he steps into the room to have a look around. The space is infact a large gallery, with white partition walls that are each decorated with painted canvases.  
  
“It’s me.” Steve says, hanging back, close to the door. “I told you I painted. This is my work.”  
  
“This is... _Steve_ , this is, just, wow.”  
  
“It was Tony and Pepper’s idea,” Steve says, not really thinking about the fact that Bucky’s never actually met them, taking for granted that Bucky hasn’t in fact, known Steve his whole life, and that his friends are complete strangers to him. “The money from every sale goes to the VA.”  
  
“That’s amazing, Steve, really, I can’t even—” And Bucky stops when he sees a cropped picture of two hands holding a bouquet. It’s the flowers that catch his eye, a deep yellow ochre coats the petals that reach up and out from the dark brown seeds of the centre. It’s eerily familiar to him. “Steve, I've seen this before.”  
  
“What? You’ve been here before?”  
  
“No, never. But I’ve seen these flowers, this style. Is there a bigger painting? Of just the sunflowers? A mural maybe?”  
  
“I did a mural for….” he starts to say. “It was for an auction for a children's charity.”  
  
And Bucky nods as if he’d expected him to say as much. “The hospital board of directors must have bought your painting. It's in paediatrics. I...I go there sometimes to—” Bucky’s blushing now, and he clears his throat. Steve can feel his own neck getting warm at seeing his work effect Bucky so much.  
  
“Who’s holding the flowers?” Bucky asks, deflecting as he stares at the stranger’s slender fingers wrapped around the stems of the bouquet. She’s wearing a claddagh ring sitting atop a gold band on her left hand. The painting stops at the woman’s neck where there is a delicate gold necklace sitting on her collar, and her bones seem as if to press against her pale skin, that’s liberally adorned with light brown freckles.  
  
“My mom, Sarah.” Steve says, with a private smile, not taking his eyes off of the painting for a second. “We always used to go to the park on the way to the flower market on a Saturday morning, and she’d have a book and I’d have my sketchbook, and we’d lie in the grass for hours. Sunflowers were always my mom’s favourite.”  
  
Bucky doesn’t ask about his use of past tense, and Steve appreciates that, but he can’t deny the way the spirit’s mouth is creased with a knowing wince.    
  
“I was eighteen when she died,” he explains, and knowing that Bucky understands this kind of loss makes it so much easier to talk about. “My dad died when I was a baby, and I didn’t have anyone else. I didn’t have _anything_. That’s actually why I joined the Army. It was like I had a family again. I had a job, I had money, I had order, and structure, and something to do, someone to be.” He has no idea why he’s saying any of this, but he feels comfortable in Bucky’s presence. It's growth and understanding and fuck, Sam would be so proud.  
  
“It was hard to leave that behind, but I knew if I didn’t, I was—” he pauses for a moment. Sam would call this a breakthrough, and Steve’s not sure when the wall inside of him came down, but there’s nothing left of the brick and mortar anymore. “I was gonna get myself killed, and I didn’t mind that so much. That was when I knew I had to go.”  
  
He wasn’t suicidal, not really, but...  
  
Steve sighs.  
  
It took a long time for Sam to convince him that putting himself forward for the most dangerous missions, jumping out of buildings, hell, _jumping out of planes_ , didn’t speak to the healthiest of mindsets. And he didn’t want to die, he just…wasn’t that keen on living so much either, that’s all.  
  
“Your friends at the bar, they weren’t in your unit?” Bucky asks, tactfully, and Steve shakes his head.  
  
“No, if they were they’d be…” _dead,_ he thinks.  
  
“No, they weren’t.” He repeats. “Tony, he owns _Stark Industries_. When it used to be a weapons company, he would put on these elaborate presentations for the military. That’s actually where we met, but when he was in Afghanistan the convoy he was in got hit.” Steve clears his throat. He remembers getting the call over the radio that Stark was missing. He remembers searching through the wreckage. He remembers being the one to call Rhodey, and worse still, he remembers being the one to call Pepper. “And he got out of the weapons business.” He finishes. He walks past a triptych that he’s entitled his blue period, and keeps going.  
  
“Sam and Rhodey, they’re Air Force.” He says. “Sam got out first. Riley, he was Sam’s wingman, but he got shot down by an RPG—he’s okay now, for the most part, but for a while it was touch and go and that changed everything for Sam. And I _understood_ when Sam told me everything, I knew exactly what he meant when he said the drive wasn’t there anymore. I should’ve gotten out then, but I was scared, so I kept going, I kept at it. And then in the desert everything changed.”  
  
Bucky nods, and Steve finds himself staring at his own work with a critical eye. He can recognise the pieces, not from what he sees on the canvas, but from what he remembers feeling when he painted it. The darker pieces are too much for him to look at, the emotions are still too raw, too visceral, like he’s being flayed alive and people are standing around to watch.  
  
So he walks over to the milder pieces instead—the ones that are still emotionally charged, but far less painful to admire.  
  
“Is this Rockaway beach?” Bucky asks, staring at a dramatic seascape on the opposite wall. Steve nods, and Bucky holds his hand out to trace the crest of each wave in mid air, running his fingers through the canvas where the white paint is thicker, and pausing thoughtfully over Steve’s signature in the bottom right corner. He mimics the curve of the S with a tilt of his wrist.  
  
“S. G. R,” he reads aloud, before turning back to the artist himself. “It's beautiful, Steve. I had no idea. It must be...it must be nice to create something like this.” Bucky continues, walking along the walls, with his hand held aloft even though he can’t feel anything.  
  
There are more seascapes on the adjacent wall, stormy horizons with dark skies, and tiny shafts of light fighting their way through the clouds. Rays of sunshine that cascade down onto the waters below. A tiny lighthouse sits alone on the bay, overlooking the ominous shore.  
  
“Yeah, it was.” Steve agrees.  
  
“Is it gonna be again?” Bucky asks, but Steve doesn’t reply.  
  
He hasn’t gone near his paintbrushes in weeks, and the only inclination he’s had to draw at all was in Bucky’s presence the other night. Sketching him had come so easily, the angle of his nose, the curve of his lips. Putting his image to paper felt like bringing him back to life again, like he was bringing him back into the real world for everyone else to see, not just Steve. He deserves that much. For the first time since abandoning his work, Steve had actually felt inclined to paint again. To _create.  
  
_ “Steve,” Bucky calls, before he has a chance to respond in the affirmative. “There’s someone coming.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Uh, a redhead?” Bucky says, looking out through the window by the door of the gallery. “Pencil skirt, jacket, heels—”  
  
“Oh that’s Pepper!” Steve says when realisation hits. “This is actually her gallery—”  
  
“I thought you said we weren’t breaking and entering!”  
  
“We’re not, would you calm down?”  
  
“Steve!” Pepper says happily when she opens the door to see him. “It’s so good to see you,” she greets, half hugging him despite the folders she’s balancing in one arm. He kisses her on the cheek and she returns the favour.  
  
“Did we have a meeting scheduled? Am I late?” She asks, adjusting the papers in her arms to look at her watch.  
  
“No, no, Pep, it’s fine. I actually just wanted to have a look around.”  
  
“Well, you know your _Unfinished no.5_ is in the back just as you left it.” Pepper says kindly, and Steve can feel Bucky’s curious gaze on the back of his neck _. “Unfinished no.5?_ ” He asks aloud, but Steve can’t exactly reply in front of Pepper.  
  
“I was just coming in to grab some things I left here yesterday,” Pepper continues. “So you’re welcome to stay, Tony’s actually out—”  
  
“Steve Rogers!” A loud voice interrupts suddenly, and Tony Stark makes his entrance as subtle as ever as he strides into the gallery, wearing a suit, and a pair of rose-tinted-sunglasses.  “To what do we owe the pleasure?”  
  
“Hey Tony,” Steve says kindly, before he remembers that the last time Tony saw him, he was at the bar, being possessed by Bucky’s spirit, and spilling drinks all over some pissed off patrons. He’s lucky that his black eye has almost completely faded. “Listen, about the other night—”  
  
“Hey, no, Cap, you have seen me do so much worse. Don’t sweat it.” Tony says, as he pats Steve on the back. “How have you been?” The genius, philanthropist asks.  
  
Steve nearly says _good_ , like he’s on autopilot, but he knows that Tony has been through much of the same post-traumatic stress following his own awful visit to the desert, and Steve’s so tired of lying, of putting up a front.  
  
“Better,” he says instead. “Getting there.”  
  
“Glad to hear it, buddy.” Tony says warmly, just as Pepper heads back over to them from the office.  
  
“I was just telling Steve that he’s welcome to use the space in the back to work on his pieces,” Pepper says encouragingly, and Tony’s grin actually gets wider.  
  
“Really? Steve, that’s great man.” Tony says genuinely, with a proud nod. “Look, we’re heading out for breakfast, why don’t you join us?”  
  
“That’s really nice of you, Tony, but I’ve got plans.”  
  
“Oh yeah?” Tony says with a sly smile. “With anyone special?” He asks, nudging Steve in the ribs.  
  
Steve looks over to where Bucky is still standing, transfixed by his work, and only half listening, and Steve realises that actually, Tony’s right. He _does_ have someone special, as unconventional as their relationship may be.  
  
“You could say that.” He tells them, and his friends look happy to hear it. “I’ll give you a call later in the week,” he says to them both, actually meaning it, and he bids them goodbye, assuring Pepper that he’ll lock up the gallery when he’s done.  
  
“No problem, Steve, just take your time.”  
  
They’re barely even out the door when his cellphone starts ringing and Steve gives Bucky an apologetic look. He hadn’t intended for their... _trip_ —and that’s what he’s calling it because it’s not a date, _it’s not a date, Rogers, don’t be an idiot, play it cool, get it together_ —to become so crowded.  
  
“Who the hell's calling me?” He wonders, half expecting to see Sam’s name and number pop up on the caller ID, as it has been for the last few days. He’s more than a little surprised to see the familiar area code of his estate agent instead. “Hello?"  
  
“Steve, it’s Phil,” says the overly familiar voice on the other end.  
  
_“It’s my estate agent.”_ Steve mouths to Bucky, who frowns as Phil continues.  
  
“You, my friend, are the luckiest man in New York!” Phil says jovially, and Steve can’t help but get a bad feeling.  
  
“Uh, thank you? Why do you say that?"   
  
“I’ve got great news, the apartment’s yours!”  
  
“What?”  
  
“And they're willing to give you a nice long lease.’  
  
“How long a lease?”  
  
"Really long. I'm gonna come over and we can go over it together.”  
  
“No! Uh—I mean, listen, Phil? Why are they giving me a long lease now?” Steve asks, though he suspects he might know the answer. His stomach churns.  
  
“Oh it’s a terrible story,” Coulson says. “The tenant was in some kind of coma, but the family are pulling the plug.”  
  
Steve almost drops his cracked phone, and he stumbles a little, until he’s leaning back against one of the partitions. The canvas of an abandoned store-front shakes as it’s knocked.  
  
“Steve?” Bucky asks in concern.  
  
“So I’ll be over in say, ten minutes?” Phil continues.  
  
“I’m not—I’m not there right now. Can I call you back? I’ll call you back.” Steve says, hanging up before Coulson has the chance to respond. He starts fumbling with the keys in his hands, and beckons for Bucky to follow as he leaves the gallery as fast as he can and starts to run.  
  
“Steve, what’s going on? Where are you going?”  
  
“We have to go see Natasha, _now_.”  
  
“Why? What’s happening?”  
  
“Buck, she signed the papers.” Steve says, stopping for a moment to catch his breath, and ignoring the occasional strange look he gets from passers-by. He lets Bucky digest the information for a second, before he resumes running.  
  
“What are you gonna say to her?” Bucky asks, as he matches Steve’s pace effortlessly.  
  
“I don't know. What kind of dirt do you have on her?”  
  
“Dirt?” Bucky wonders. “Dirt,” he repeats. “Uh, her real name is Natalia, but she changed it to Natasha when she was thirteen.”  
  
“What else?”  
  
“She loves watching telenovellas! Uh, she’s allergic to mangoes…”  
  
“All right, the only way this is gonna work is if I can tell her something that only you know. Something personal, something—”  
  
“Oh! She french-kissed her ex-boyfriend five minutes before her wedding! And she used to call him the Falcon in bed—”  
  
“What?”  
  
“He had this move, where he would climb up onto the—”  
  
“Okay! Okay, that’ll work, that’s good, that’s good.”  
  
“You really think we can change her mind?” Bucky asks, and Steve really doesn’t want to think of the alternative.  
  
“What other choice to do we have?”

 

 

***

 

 

“So, how did you know James?” Natasha asks once she’s invited Steve into her home. The address seems familiar but he’s not sure why. “You must have worked together? God knows he spent all of his time at the hospital.”  
  
“Everyone likes to point that out, don’t they?” Bucky says with an eye roll as he follows them towards the kitchen, while a black cat trails behind them.  
  
“Actually, this might sound a little, uh—”  
  
“Shit!” Bucky says suddenly, interrupting Steve’s reluctant tale, because he’s just seen that his niece is in the kitchen too, dressed up and sitting at a child-sized table with a tea-set scattered around her. “Kate’s here? Shit, Steve, you can’t...you can’t do this in front of her, it’ll freak them out.”  
  
The cat hisses from where it’s jumped onto the breakfast bar, and Natasha strokes its back to calm it down. “Hush, Liho,” she whispers, sounding preoccupied, and trying to give Steve her full attention. “I always hated that cat,” Bucky mutters, while Liho hisses in return. To Nat, the cat is just growling at thin air, baring her teeth to empty space, so she scoops her into her arms and needles her fingers into her fur.  
  
Steve gives Bucky an incredulous look at his distracted comment, but the ghost’s adamant about one thing: “You have to lie, Steve.”  
  
Steve looks up at Natasha as she blows on her tea to cool it down, cradling the cup with one hand, while idly stroking her cat with the other. “I’m sorry, you were saying how you know James?” She prompts.  
  
“Abort, Steve, I mean it, _lie your ass off_.” Bucky says.  
  
“We worked together—” Steve starts to say before Bucky interrupts him, _again.  
  
_ “No! Don’t say _that_ , she’s a lawyer, she’ll never believe that you’re a doctor!”  
  
“—I mean...we worked together...on me?”  
  
“Oh my god, you’re the worst.” Bucky mutters, as a man walks in through the backdoor with a golden retriever that pads straight over to where Bucky’s hovering, and sits himself down at his feet.  
  
“Shit, Clint’s here too?” Bucky moans, having clearly expected there to be much less of an audience.  
  
“You know you’re his type.” Clint remarks, as he ruffles his daughters hair, and sips at a bit of her juice box, before edging closer to his wife, winding his arm around her waist.  
  
“Clint!” Nat and Bucky hiss at the same time, in some semblance of surprised outrage.  
  
“What? I’m just saying we spent all that time trying to set him up when—”  
  
“Can you just, just take the dog out, please?”  
  
“Aww, but we only just got back,” Clint starts to say, before stopping abruptly. Steve can see the way that Nat’s shoulders have slumped, and Clint’s smart enough to do as he’s told. He grabs the lead from off of the hook in the kitchen, and kisses his wife on the cheek as he leaves.  
  
“Come on, Lucky.” Clint calls over to the dog, but the golden retriever won’t move. He’s pawing at the linoleum by Bucky’s feet and he’s whining at being ignored. Steve watches as Bucky crouches down to be at the same level as Lucky, reaching out as if to touch, but remembering at the last second that he _can’t_.  
  
“Hey boy,” he says obligingly, and the dog whoofs a little softly at finally being acknowledged.  
  
“Lucky, here boy, come on.” Clint calls over.  
  
"It’s okay, go on.” Bucky gestures, just as Clint comes over and gently pulls at the fur on Lucky’s neck, to leads him back outside, while his claws skitter over the linoleum as he goes.  
  
“Sorry, it’s been...it’s been a difficult morning,” Nat explains, as she sets the cat down. “You were saying you were James’s patient?”  
  
“Yeah. He, uh, he really helped me.” Steve says, dipping his head and rubbing the back of his neck in a sheepish gesture. Nat, meanwhile, is absent-mindedly playing with the arrow shaped necklace that’s sitting comfortably on her collar, and she doesn’t notice that her daughter’s standing up, and staring at thin air, but Bucky does.  
  
“Kate?” Bucky says, “can you see me?” the little girl nods, pulling on the sleeve of her dress with her teeth, and swinging her hips as if she can’t bear to stand still.  
  
“I was sick.” Steve explains. “I had meningitis. Spiral meningitis."  
  
“Spiral meningitis? That’s not a disease.” Bucky scoffs, still staring at his niece in awe that she knows he’s there.  
  
“I’m so sorry.” Nat says, briefly looking over to her shy daughter’s fidgeting, before looking back at Steve.    
  
“Oh, no, it's okay,” Steve assures her. “I'm much better now. James, he...he believed in me,” —and that part’s true, at least— “he believed that I would recover when nobody else did. And then I did."  
  
"That sounds just like him.” Nat says with a proud smile, and red-rimmed eyes. “But why are you telling me this?” She asks, more directly.  
  
“Because I know about James's situation.” Steve says with an equally blunt response, trying not to stare at Bucky sat on a comically small child-sized plastic chair in the middle of a little girl’s tea party dressed like James Dean.  
  
“And I just wanted to ask you, actually, I just wanted to _beg_ you to give him a little more time.” He pleads while Kate puts a cookie out on the table for herself, and then quite pointedly, puts another on the plate in front of Bucky, before taking her seat.  
  
“You really know I’m here, don’t you?” Bucky says to his niece as she busies herself with picking the smarties from off of the cookie, before chewing on them thoughtfully.  
  
“Eat up!” She says with a bubbly sort-of voice, while her legs swing back and forth under the chair, not quite able to touch the floor when she’s sat right back.  
  
“I need you to save that for me, for later, okay sweetie?” Bucky says, and Steve can feel the emotion rolling off of Bucky in waves. Kate nods dutifully, and Steve can only imagine how much she must adore her uncle, and how hard this must all be for the whole family, not to mention a child.  
  
“He’s gonna pull through this,” Steve tells Natasha firmly. “I just know it.”  
  
_He has to,_ the worst case scenario doesn’t bear thinking about.  
  
Natasha nods, and bites her lip. “That’s really sweet of you to say,” she says. “But it’s too late.”  
  
“'Tasha, what did you do?” Bucky asks, his attention caught.  
  
“What do you mean?” Steve asks, though he knows what the answer will be.  
  
“It's Steve, right?” Natasha checks, and Steve nods. “You see, it's too late because I've already signed the papers. We're terminating life support tomorrow at noon, while Kate’s at school.” Natasha explains, looking away for a moment to compose herself.  
  
“You can’t…” Steve starts to say quietly, but Natasha either doesn’t hear him, or doesn’t want to.  
  
“This is what James wanted.” She says, sounding rehearsed, like she’s had to tell herself the same thing repeatedly. “I’ve spent so long thinking I knew what was best for him, what he should wear, who he should date. This is the last thing James asked for. And for the first time in my life, I'm gonna respect his wishes.”  
  
“Oh Nat,” Bucky says sadly, because he can see that she’s upset, and Steve knows a guilty look when he sees one—Bucky’s blaming himself.  
  
_Fuck it,_ he thinks. They tried it Bucky’s way, now it’s Steve’s turn.  
  
“Look, this is gonna sound really strange to you, but—”  
  
“Steve, no, don’t.” Bucky says, but Steve’s not listening.  
  
“—the truth is James is here with us right now.” Steve finishes and Bucky puts his head in his hands to muffle his own frustrated yelling. “He came here with me,” Steve continues. “He's standing next to you, begging you to wait.”  
  
“Right next to me?” Nat asks.  
  
“Right there.” Steve clarifies.  
  
“Steve, stop.” Bucky begs, as the small black cat hisses from where it’s now prowling at Natasha’s feet.  
  
“No, let me do this.” Steve says, addressing Bucky in full view of Natasha and her cat. He turns back to them. “Look, I don't know how or why I can see him when you can’t, but somehow I can see James, I can see his spirit. I know it's crazy, but I can talk to him,” Steve knows how insane this sounds, and he can feel the atmosphere in the room change dramatically.  “I can have James explain the whole thing to you, and I’ll translate—” But Bucky is shaking his head now, and clearly thinks that Steve has miscalculated this particular gamble.  
  
“Could you just hold on, just one second?” Nat asks him, with a calm voice, that’s downright terrifying. Steve watches as Nat walks over to Kate, and ushers her out of the room with her teddy bear. “It’s time for Dora the Explorer!” Nat says, in a cheerful voice, as she guides her daughter, fairy wings and all, over to the sitting room to put the television on.  
  
“You’re screwed. Hell, we’re both screwed.” Bucky says.  
  
“What? No, Buck, I really think I was getting through to her. We’ll go straight to the hospital. We’ll rip those papers up.”  
  
“You should run.” Bucky says instead, sounding almost bored, and it’s the only warning Steve gets before he feels a sharp kick in the back of his leg, and his arm is twisted and yanked behind him.  
  
“You get the hell out of my house, or I’ll break your arm.” A chilling voice says in Steve’s ear, and it takes him a second to realise that it’s actually Natasha who’s speaking.  
  
“Jesus, Nat, let him go,” Bucky says, but Nat can’t hear him. She squeezes Steve’s forearm to emphasise the threat and Steve gulps. Nat lets him go, and quickly positions herself in front of him, to give him room to leave unhindered.  
  
“Get out.” She says again, and Steve can see her hand reaching for any kind of weapon she can get her hands on.  
  
“Steve, we have to go.” Bucky says sensibly, but Steve’s stubborn.  
  
“Why would I make this up?” He asks, backing away. “He’s here, why would I lie about that?”  
  
Nat’s fingers find the bread knife on the counter.  
  
“Shit,” Steve mutters, though he doesn’t hightail it out of there as he should. Falcon, he remembers suddenly. “I know things!” He says. “I know you kissed your ex before your wedding!"  
  
“How do you know that?” Nat asks. “Nobody knows that!"  
  
“James told me! He didn’t break his promise, Nat.” Steve says then, using his last option, his supposed trump card that even Bucky hadn’t expected him to use.  
  
But her confusion at Steve’s knowledge only seems to fuels her grief filled fury.  
  
Natasha’s eyes go wide and dark, and so very angry. It doesn’t matter that Steve knows things he couldn’t possibly know, it doesn’t matter that the seed of doubt was already planted the second Lucky refused to get up for Clint—something the dog only ever did with James—none of that matters, because Nat is grieving and this stranger is baiting her and she will not back down.    
  
“Get out.” She hisses one last time, turning the handle of the knife over in her hand like she means business. She moves as if she’s gonna throw it, and finally, Steve runs out the front door.

 

 

***

 

 

“I don't think your sister’s a very spiritual person.” Steve says, having crossed the road to give himself a wide berth from the very angry woman inside of the property. He can see the little girl balancing on the back of the sofa, looking out the window and waving.  
  
Bucky waves back, and the girl looks pleased. Steve can feel his heart clench at the sight.  
  
“She's just being a good mom…” Bucky says with a thoughtful look on his face then, as Natasha gestures for her daughter to get down, and she’s gone from the window once more. “I think…” Bucky starts to say, before continuing with a little more certainty. “When my family died, Nat was all I had. She kept me together, she was there for me, and I never even told her how much…” Bucky sighs, and doesn’t finish his sentence.  
  
“Come on, Bucky. This can't be it. We can’t give up.” And the irony of Steve’s own words is not lost on him, when a week ago he was getting a similar lecture from Sam.  But he can’t let Bucky give up, not when they’ve made it this far. Not when they’ve made it this far _together_.  
  
“Steve…”  
  
“No. We can go back to the hospital. I can talk to Dr. Dugan, or—”  
  
“ _Steve_ —”  
  
“—what about that asshole guy?”  
  
“Brock? Rumlow? Come on Steve, he’d have you in a straightjacket before you’d have even finished talking. There's no way anyone's gonna believe I'm still here.” _That I’m worth saving_ , Steve reads between the lines.  
  
“What about Kate? She saw you, right? She did, you know she did."  
  
“Oh, great. My fate's in the hands of a four-year-old who has seven other imaginary friends.”  
  
“Wait. There is someone else."  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“Come on.” Steve says instead of answering, gesturing for Bucky to follow him as he walks off.  
  
“Steve, you better not be talking about the damn dog!” 

 

***

  
  
   
“Thor!” Steve calls out as soon as he’s through the door of the occult store in Bushwick. The girl at the counter gives them a curious look as she chews her gum with an open-mouth, and two older gentlemen in the back look none-too-pleased at the loud entrance but Steve doesn’t care.  
  
“Darcy?” Steve asks, hoping he’s recalled the girl’s name correctly. “I need to see Thor.”  
  
“Yeah, I heard you.” She says a little sardonically, before she leans over the counter, and yells for Thor, much in the same manner that Steve had a moment ago.  
  
“Darcy there is no need to— _dude_ , you can _not_ bring that in here!” Thor says, his voice having raised exponentially at the realisation that Steve wasn’t alone. He’s running forward now, fast enough that his sandals are slapping loudly against the soles of his feet, and he almost loses them altogether in his hurry to get to the front of the store. “What are you thinking?” He asks Steve, gesturing in the general area where Bucky’s spirit currently is.  
  
“I can hear you, _dude_.” Bucky growls at the surfer-guy turned medium, insulted by Thor’s disapproval.  
  
“I’m sorry, Thor, really,” Steve says, “and we’ll get out of your hair, but Thor! You were right! He is alive!”  
  
“Righteous. Verily.” Thor smirks and Steve takes that as permission to continue.  
  
“But, he's in a coma, and his family's about to take him off life support.”  
  
“Not so righteous.” Thor surmises.  
  
“We’re screwed.” Bucky says, and he blanches when Thor throws a glance in his direction, as though he can sense the negativity radiating off of him.  
  
“So, what, are you socialising now?” Thor asks.  
  
“We've... acclimated.” Steve admits, and Thor seems to find the response amusing.  
  
“Yes. I can tell. In fact, I detect a great deal of intensity in the spirit’s feelings for yourself as well.”  
  
Steve’s fairly certain that the tips of Bucky’s ears have gone pink.  
  
“Oh, really?” Steve asks, relishing in the spirit’s embarrassment.  
  
“What? No! Shut up!” Bucky hisses.  
  
“You have a mighty red aura!” Thor exclaims, as he lets out a hearty chuckle, before clearing his throat and adopting a suitably chastised look. “My apologies, spirit.” He says. “I appear to have greatly embarrassed you.”  
  
“Shut. _up_ .” Bucky says through gritted teeth, though his words fall on deaf ears. “Can we focus here?”  
  
“Sorry,” Steve says, though he’s pretty sure that his own shit-eating grin defeats the purpose of his apology. He turns back to Thor and asks him if there’s a way to use a spell or a chant, or some kind of magic to get Bucky’s spirit back into his body.    
  
“You are asking the wrong question.” Thor responds, cryptically.  
  
“Why is that wrong?” Steve asks, while Bucky growls in frustration.  
  
“Captain,” Thor says, with a tone that’s as wise as it otherwordly, and Steve frowns because he definitely did _not_ disclose his rank to the blonde greek god. “I have the gift of sight. I did not ask for it, but here we are. I can sense these beings, these spirits caught between this world and the next, but I cannot tell you why they are here, nor can I surmise what their unfinished business may yet be.”  
  
“Do I have the gift of sight?” Steve asks.  
  
“No, you, Steve Rogers, are something else entirely.”  
  
“But if I don't have it, how can I see Bucky and talk to him when nobody else can?”  
  
“Yes.” Thor says.  
  
“Yes, what?” Bucky and Steve ask simultaneously.  
  
“That _is_ the question.” Thor says, with a kind of dramatic flair that reminds Steve of his high school’s production of Hamlet. “Farewell.” He says then before spinning around, with his red cardigan swinging around him like a cape, and disappearing behind a bookshelf in the back of the store.  
  
“Exit, pursued by a bear.” Bucky mutters to himself.  
  
“Thor!” Steve calls after him, but it’s no use. “Well, shit, that was unhelpful.” He says. “What the hell is he talking about?”  
  
“How the hell should I know?” Bucky mutters, and Steve growls in frustration, spinning around himself in the middle of the store.  
  
“God, I feel like it's right there in front of us, I just can't get a handle on it. I mean, why did I move into your apartment in the first place? Why can I see you when no one else can? Why was I there in the subway when that guy collapsed. It all seems...connected somehow.”  
  
Steve stops spinning, and he looks up at the bookshelves at the back for a beat before racing over to the stacks he saw when he first came across the store a few weeks ago. “That’s it!” He says, sifting through the books until he finds another copy of the _seminal_ book Thor recommended to him. He doesn’t care if anyone else in the store can hear him, but at least where they are now, behind the bookshelves, no one can see him.  
  
“What are you doing?” Bucky asks, in concern.  
  
“Dr. Eric Selvig,” Steve reads, waving the book in Bucky’s face. “He’s a professor at NYU. He’s just over in Manhattan. We could go talk to him, maybe he can help!” Steve goes to grab his phone from out of his pocket, and as he does so, the other contents fall to the floor. Notably, the matchbook from _The Archers_ that lead them to Coney Island, and the photograph that had been pinned up behind the bar.  
  
Bucky crouches on the floor to get a better look, and he smiles sadly.  
  
“You kept this?” He asks Steve, gesturing to the small photograph of Bucky and Nat grinning and smiling, complete with alcohol and sparklers, and a burning piece of paper in Bucky’s hand.  
  
“I can put it back,” Steve says, mistaking Bucky’s words as disapproval. “I just—I wanted to have a picture of you. In case.”  
  
“In case of what?”  
  
“In case I never saw you again.” Steve says, joining Bucky on the floor. “I’m sorry.”  
  
“No, don't be sorry. It’s...it’s kind of nice.”  
  
“I really like that picture.”  
  
“Yeah. Yeah, I like it too. I’d just gotten my MCAT scores.” Bucky explains.  
  
“You must have done well.”  
  
“No,” Bucky laughs. “I bombed. We’re talking some seriously shitty scores. I’d always dreamed about following in my dad’s footsteps as a doctor, and suddenly that was being taken away from me.”  
  
“And that's a good thing?” Steve asks, confusedly, seeing as how the picture looks celebratory in its nature.  
  
Bucky shakes his head. “I wanted to go back to the library, hit the books, start over, but Nat wouldn’t hear it. She said the best thing we could do was to burn my scores and drink Clint’s bar dry.”  
  
“Clint was the bartender who took the picture.” Steve realises.  
  
“Yeah,” Bucky confirms. “He owns it now. But now he only lets us drink for free on special occasions, since he’s footing the bill.  
  
“You look happy.” Steve says, picking up the photograph, as both he and Bucky stand back up.    
  
“I _was_ happy.” Bucky agrees. “I completely failed at something, and it was one of the nights of my life. I love my job, I do, but all I remember doing is working. All the time. Just working and trying and working some more and trying so hard, and for what?”  
  
“You help people.” Steve says, to try and console him. “You save lives.”  
  
“But I can’t even save my own,” Bucky says, brushing away frustrated tears. “I put off everything, I always thought I could get everything done later, and now there’s not even gonna be—”  
  
“No, don't say that.” Steve interrupts. “There's still time. We're gonna see this this professor, and we’ll find a way, we’ll do—”  
  
“Steve, I don’t want to spend my last day on this earth crying,” Bucky says sadly. “Or fighting my fate.”  
  
Steve wants to scream and shout because for the first time in months _he_ doesn’t want to give up, and he has something worth fighting for, but everyone else is throwing in the towel.  
  
“I wanna do something with you.” Bucky says and Steve can feel a lump growing in his throat.  
  
“You do?”  
  
Bucky nods.  
  
“Okay,” Steve says, thinking that whatever they end up doing, Steve will find a way to visit more mediums as they go. “What do you want to do?” And suddenly he wants to do everything with Bucky too. He wants to travel, he wants to try new things, meet new people, but he _only_ wants to do it with Bucky by his side. He feels...he feels alive again, and he doesn’t want that feeling to go away. He’s spent so long in the dark, he’s ready for the light.  
  
“We could go to Paris!” He suggests, without thinking. “We could go anywhere, anywhere you want. Just so long as they take American Express.” The compensation Steve received from the shit show overseas is more than enough to live on, and he begrudges using it knowing that not everyone made it out alive, but for Bucky he’ll make the exception.  
  
“Where would _you_ go?” Bucky asks instead. “If it was your last day, your last night, where would you go?”  
  
Steve smiles, because he knows that the exact place that he would go, has something there that Bucky loves too.

 

 

***

 

 

They check out the new Degas exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, and when they’re done staring at the delicate pencil drawings of ballerinas and young girls in their ornate frames, they wander over to see Matisse. Steve smiles at the little girl dancing in front of it—copying the poses, with her little audio-tour device clutched tight in her small hand.  
  
They find the Jackson Pollock painting that stretches across a whole wall, and there’s a crowd of people sat in front of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Slack-jawed in awe, they stare at the blues and yellows of the painted pre-dawn light in wonder, but it’s the Monet that stops Bucky in his tracks. Literally.  
  
Steve doesn’t expect him to have stopped so suddenly in their walk around, and while still admiring the surrounding works, he ends up stumbling straight _through_ Bucky and over to the other side. He shudders at the awful cold that seeps into his bones as he does so—the side effect of stumbling through a spirit, that only Steve seems affected by. It takes the air from his lungs. His head is screaming and he can hear the sound of a car breaking—the awful screech of tyres on the asphalt and so much pain. This time it’s Bucky that wrenches himself away, looking as ashen faced as Steve feels.  
  
“Shit, Steve are you—”  
  
“F-fine, ‘m fine.” Steve insists, weaving his way down to the black bench that’s been placed in front of the artwork. He manages to sit down before he falls down, and waves away Bucky’s concern with his left hand while tightly gripping the black leather seat with his right.  
  
Bucky sits down beside him, and Steve can’t help but notice the guilt written all over his face. He’ll reassure him in a little while, but first he wants to get his heartbeat back under control.  
  
“' _Reflections of Clouds on the Water-Lily Pond_ ,'” Bucky reads aloud, and Steve’s glad for the distraction as he tries to catch his breath, still shedding the last of the ghostly chill. “It’s beautiful.” Bucky’s practically whispering now, as though all sound should be hushed in the presence of art such as this. Steve knows the feeling, and smiles.  
  
Steve likes to let his eyes cross, until the colours blend together, until his eyesight blurs and the waterlilies become abstract. He likes to refocus slowly, letting his eyes adjust to the sharp reality and the beauty inherent within the french impressionists work. He’s about to suggest for Bucky to do the same, when he sees his ghostly companion get up, and stand right up close to the triptych that fills the gallery wall.  
  
“I like blue,” Bucky says almost wistfully, and it’s no wonder when he told Steve how both Art and the Sea had such a calming effect on him. “This was a good last day.” Bucky says, in that same hushed tone and the reminder of what they’re doing and why breaks Steve’s heart.  
  
They stay there like that until closing, and a friendly old security guard approaches Steve and asks him to leave. He doesn’t comment on the tear tracks on either of Steve’s cheeks, and neither does Bucky.

 

 

***

 

 

It’s getting dark by the time they make it back to the apartment. Steve’s still more than a little wary of the subway, so they’ve been walking everywhere instead. The sun has already set, but the streetlights are shining through the opened curtains, and casting an orange glow into the bedroom. Steve all but collapses onto the double bed, purposely sticking to one side to give Bucky room to join him.  
  
He tries not to let out a relieved sigh when he does.  
  
“Hey,” Bucky says simply, once they’ve both maneuvered themselves so that they’re lying on their sides and facing one another.  
  
“Hey.” Steve responds simply. He can’t stop staring at Bucky’s face, at his eyes, at his lips, at the small freckles on the top of his cheeks that sit softly on the bridge of his nose. He’s desperately trying to commit every one of his features to memory. He doesn’t want this moment to end. He wants to cradle it to his and keep it safe in his arms, in the way that he cannot do with Bucky. He would happily stay in this bed, in this apartment, staring at Bucky for all time if he could.  
  
But time’s the one thing they don’t have anymore.  
  
“This is so dumb, I'm so bad at this.” Bucky says, staring at Steve. “I’m actually nervous, can you believe that?”  
  
“How can you be nervous when I can't even touch you?” Steve asks, in a hushed whisper.  
  
“I think I'm more nervous _because_ you can't touch me.” Bucky says. “You know in the hospital when you touched my hand?”  
  
Steve nods, remembering it well. He’d been afraid that the response might have been similar to the visceral flashback he seemed to experience whenever he went through Bucky’s spirit, but that hadn’t been the case with Bucky’s body.  
  
“I felt it.” Bucky tells him. “I mean, my _spirit_ felt it. But when Claire was in my room, before you came in? She was holding my hand too but I couldn’t feel that. And Claire’s not just anyone you know? She’s a friend, I’ve known her for years.” Bucky bites his lip. “But then there’s you.”  
  
Steve doesn’t know how to reply to that, because he doesn’t understand any of it either. He could tell Bucky now that he’s felt more alive in the presence of his ghost than he has in years. He could confess his feelings that have been growing every second that they’ve spent together. He could unload all of that onto him, but he’s too scared.  
  
“I think,” Steve lets Bucky continue instead. “I think that if you could ever _really_ touch me, I might wake up from all of this.”  
  
Steve puts his hand up, hovering in mid air as an invitation, and Bucky puts his own hand up to join him.  
  
They don’t touch. Not really, and Steve’s careful to avoid putting his hand through Bucky’s, since they both know that’s no fun, but Steve can feel….resistance. He can’t explain it, and it makes his head hurt just thinking about it, but it’s like a magnetic field. The air is charged around where Bucky’s palm should be. The tiny hairs on Steve’s hand stand on end, and if he wanted to, he could sail right through, he knows that.  
  
But if Steve focuses, if he’s careful, he can concentrate on ebb and flow and feel of the air, and he can almost...almost…  
  
“I can almost feel that.” He says.  
  
“Me too.” Bucky confirms, a little in awe. “I think I know what my unfinished business is.” He says then, choking a little on his words.  
  
“What?” Steve asks.  
  
“ _You_.”

 

 

***

 

 

“Bucky?” Steve mumbles, still groggy as the last of his blissfully-dreamless sleep fades away. It’s the first good night’s sleep he’s had in months, and he feels warm and fuzzy around the edges. He yawns, smacking his lips, and stretches his arms up high before registering the emptiness on the other side of the bed.  
  
The side that was _definitely_ occupied last night.  
  
“Shit, Bucky?!” Steve shouts this time, scrambling to get up from the tangled sheets. The sudden panic is _unreal_ and his lungs seize up with the possibility that Bucky might be gone. He’s too late, he’s too late again _. This can’t be happening, please, no, this can’t be—  
  
_ “I’m right here, Steve.” He hears a quiet voice say, and he looks over to the corner of the room to see Bucky sitting on the armchair, with his legs crossed underneath him. The early morning sun is shining through the windows, but Bucky—of course—casts no shadow behind him. His hands are resting idle in his lap, and from his position, Steve thinks he must have been sat there for a while.  
  
“Thank god, you’re still here.” Steve says, letting out a worried breath and sagging back down against the edge of the bed. “I thought...well, you know what I thought.”  
  
Bucky nods.  
  
“I know what I’m supposed to do now.” Steve says then and Bucky frowns.  
  
“What? What are you talking about?”  
  
“I know what I’m supposed to do.” Steve repeats, as he looks around the room for the shirt he discarded some time during the night. “To make it right. Because this time I _can_ do something.”  
  
“Steve, what are you—?”  
  
“Bucky, when we first met,” Steve interrupts, “I kept saying that you were dead. But that was wrong. It was me, I was the dead one. I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep, I just...existed. I only got this apartment so Sam would find it harder to try and help me all the time.”  
  
Steve runs a hand through his hair, rubbing at the back of his neck before continuing. “I was dead, and you brought me back. You _saved_ me.” He says, and having finally found his shirt, throws it on, making his bed-head hair all the more prominent. Bucky doesn’t reply, but his mouth is agape and his eyes look a little wet.  
  
“And now it’s my turn to save you.” Steve finishes, standing with a little flourish.  
  
“How?”  
  
“I'm gonna steal your body.” Steve says simply, in the same way someone might decide to switch cereals.  
  
“You’re going to _what_?!” Bucky asks incredulously, but Steve ignores him. He’s already running through the apartment in search of his other shoe, having finally found his socks, and he’s only wearing one sleeve of his brown leather jacket, so the rest of it is flapping behind him as he darts around. He must look more than a little manic, because he can feel Bucky’s fears and concerns coming off of him in waves.  
  
“Steve, stop, this is—this is _insane,_ what are you thinking? You can’t do this!”  
  
Steve whirls around then, clearly a little faster than Bucky was expecting because he stops, stock-still to avoid another incident like at the museum.  
  
“Why can’t I?” Steve asks.  
  
“Because you’ll go to jail!”  
  
“So? If something happens to you, do you really think I care about where I'll be?” Steve says, almost shouting past the prominent lump of emotion lodged in his throat, trying to choke him.  
  
Steve can see that he’s won—Bucky really doesn’t know what to do when he’s faced with a determined Steve Rogers, not to mention a determined Steve Rogers in _love—_ and shit, he still can’t believe that’s happening, but it is—he _does_ love him, and maybe one day he’ll get to say it out loud.  
  
“Look, at least this'll buy us a little more time.” He says, a little softer now, and Bucky’s just standing there, worrying at his bottom lip with his two front teeth.  
  
“The things you'd have to know to even start to pull this off—” Bucky starts, trying to sway Steve back over to a logical way of thinking.  
  
“You'll talk me through it.” Steve says simply, because saving the man he loves _is_ simple. He believes in Bucky, and he’s pretty sure Bucky believes in him, so that will at least get them as far as the door if not further.  
  
“I’m not sure I’m worth all of this, Steve.” Bucky says, and Steve has never wanted to be able to reach out and comfort him with his touch more.  
  
“You are.” Steve insists instead, hugging his own arms close to his chest as if he were holding Bucky. “You _are_ ."  
  
“Okay,” Bucky says adopting Steve’s confidence, as he starts pacing the room. He wrings his hands together as he goes through a list in his head, “okay, you're gonna need a van,” he says, “and somebody you trust, and I mean _really_ trust. Someone....someone who would help you hide a body, no questions asked.”  
  
“I know a guy.” Steve says, without hesitation.  
  
“Really?” Bucky asks, clearly curious, having stopped his pacing in surprise.  
  
“Well, to be honest, he’ll definitely ask some questions, but yeah, I do, I know someone.”

 

 

***

 

 

Steve lies, and says he needs to borrow Sam’s buddy’s van to move some large canvases from Manhattan, back over to the gallery in Williamsburg. He says that Pepper’s busy, and that Tony’s not answering his phone—and because it’s before 9am that’s really not too much of a stretch for the imagination. The real reason is that any van they would have provided would have been labelled with _Stark Industries_ and he’s kinda going for non-descript.  
  
“Scott said you can have the keys on one condition.” Sam says when Steve finds him standing outside of his apartment door that morning, having been buzzed up by one of the neighbours.  
  
“Oh yeah?” Steve replies, feigning ignorance, when really Scott Lang has worshipped the ground that Steve has walked on ever since _Captain Rogers_ saved him from getting blown to pieces while he was working for a private contractor in the Ghazni province. Asking him to help out with a little bit of manipulation wasn’t exactly hard. Saving a guy’s life sure does have its perks.    
  
“He wants me to drive.” Sam finishes, as Steve knew he would. “He’s a little protective of his stuff.” Sam clarifies.  
  
“Well, as long as it’s no trouble.” Steve Rogers, the sneaky little shit, responds sweetly.  
  
“No trouble at all,” Sam responds, completely unaware of what is to come, as he follows Steve back down the steps of the building.  
  
“So you like cats?” Sam says, following Steve as they pass one of his neighbours in the hall. The man looks up, a little flustered, and Steve remembers talking to him when he and Bucky were going door-to-door in search of information. Lorraine and Peggy had said that his name was T’Challa.  
  
He’s surrounded by his feline companions. He’s holding two in his arms, while another two are balancing on both shoulders, and he’s ushering another three into his apartment with his foot. He looks annoyed at Sam, and once he’s shut himself back into his apartment, Steve gives his best friend a pointed stare.  
  
“What?” Sam asks, holding his hands up in a show of innocence. “Dude has that many cats and you don't wanna know more?”  
  
“He has a point.” Bucky says, appearing suddenly beside them both and siding with Sam.  
  
“Just get in the van,” Steve says to them both with an eye-roll.

 

***

 

 

“So where are we headed, again?” Sam asks, as they drive over the Manhattan bridge to avoid the construction traffic on Pearl.  
  
“Metro-General,” Steve replies easily. So far, he’s not technically lying.  
  
“Oh yeah?”  
  
“Yeah, do you remember that mural I did? With the flowers?”  
  
“Vaguely.”  
  
“I’m just gonna do some restoration on it, take it back to the gallery for a little while.”  
  
“Wait, you didn’t tell him?” Bucky hisses incredulously from the back seat, when he realises that Steve is pretending to move artwork and not a _body._ “I can’t believe you didn't tell him.”  
  
“Restoration?” Sam asks.  
  
“Apparently some kid threw up on it in paediatrics, so I’m just gonna make sure the damage is minimal.”  
  
“You are scarily convincing right now,” Bucky mutters. “Why weren’t you this good at lying to Natasha?” He asks then, and Steve turns around to glare at Bucky in an effort to get him to shut up.  
  
“It’s that kicked-puppy vibe you’ve got going, isn’t it?,” Bucky continues, staring at Steve’s lips for a little longer than is strictly necessary, before he blinks and cocks his head to one side to try and get a better look at Sam while he’s driving. “Poor guy. You know, he looks kinda familiar.”  
  
“You saw him at the bar.” Steve says, and then winces when he realises that he’s in the van with _Sam_ and there’s really no reason for him to be talking to himself.  
  
“Saw who at the bar?” Sam asks.  
  
“No one, nothing, never mind.” Steve replies, oh-so-smoothly, as he starts playing with the radio, flipping between channels and turning up the volume to distract the rest of the car’s occupants.  
  
“Steve, you have to tell this guy.” Bucky says.  
  
“Not yet.”  
  
“Not yet what?” Sam asks, shouting a little to be heard over the loud music that’s now blasting through the car.  
  
“We’re not there yet.” Steve says, just as he points out the turning Sam needs to take for the hospital car-park. “Okay, _now_ we’re here.” He says, just as Sam puts the van into _park_ , and Steve practically jumps out.  
  
“Steve,” Sam says, and he’s using his counsellor tone, all calm and collected-like, as he runs around the front of the vehicle to confront Steve. “Be honest with me man, has your imaginary friend been back?”  
  
“He’s not imaginary—” Steve says instinctively and Sam lets out woosh of air before leaning back against the van door.  
  
“Well that’s a yes.” He says with a tired sigh.  
  
“Tell him.” Bucky stresses.  
  
“All right, all right!” Steve says, and Sam looks surprised, having only heard one side of Steve’s ongoing conversations with Bucky. “I knew you wouldn't come if I told you,” he says, and Sam’s crossing his arms now.  
  
“Do I really want to hear this?” Sam asks, acting as though he’s suddenly wary of anything and everything that comes out of Steve’s mouth. Steve takes a breath.  
  
“My imaginary friend is not imaginary. He’s the spirit of a guy who's in a coma upstairs. And they’re about to take him off life support, so we have to get him someplace safe.”  
  
Sam looks a little sad at Steve’s words, and Rogers can already tell the connections Sam’s making in his head to Steve’s grief and survivor’s guilt and feelings of inadequacy that have only gotten worse after Ann Raymond gave him shit at the grocery store. Dammit, he’s not projecting and he doesn’t have _time_ for this. None of them do.  
  
“You should've told him earlier.” Bucky says from the peanut gallery.  
  
“He wouldn't have believed me.” Steve responds, just as Sam’s eyebrows crease further, until his nose is wrinkled in confusion and concern.  
  
“Does he believe you now?” Bucky wonders aloud, but Steve’s not so sure.  
  
“Steve, I really think we should go to the psych ward,” Sam says, gesturing over to the hospital entrance. “We can get an evaluation done. There are people here who can help—”  
  
“Sam we don’t time. It’s 11:30 now, he’ll be dead in a half hour!”  
  
“Tell him I know that this is a stretch—” Bucky pipes up, practically bouncing in desperation for them to get a move-on, while keeping an eye on the door of the carpark, worried that this insane conversation might get overheard, and everyone will end up getting committed before they even make it to Bucky’s ward.  
  
“Bucky is standing right behind you _right now_.” Steve says desperately. “He knows what a stretch this is for you—”  
  
“Oh he does does he?” Sam interrupts, rubbing a hand down his face. “Okay, look, if your friend's really behind me, ask him what I'm doing with my hands. Rock, paper or scissors?”  
  
“Rock,” Bucky says.  
  
“Rock,” Steve repeats after Bucky’s prompting. “Scissors.” They go again. “Rock. Paper. Rock again.”  
  
Sam frowns in suspicion and changes tactics.  
  
“He’s flipping me off!” Bucky says in surprise and Steve adopts the same shock.  
  
“Are you flipping him off? You’re flipping him off!”  
  
“What the actual f—okay, no, this has to stop. Even if...even if he’s real. Even if Bucky is real, do you have any idea what you’re risking for this guy?”  
  
“Yes!”  
  
“Why?” Sam asks incredulously.  
  
“Because I love him!” Steve blurts out, to his—and everyone else’s—surprise. He heaves in a deep breath. “I love him.” Steve repeats, more assuredly. Bucky hasn’t said a word but he looks shocked, and ignoring Sam’s pointed stare, Steve turns to the spirit instead.  
  
“I do, I love you,” Steve says, taking a step closer to Bucky. “I didn’t think I deserved to be...to _feel_ good, and I didn’t think it would even be fair to ask anyone to be with me and all my shit, but when I’m with you, none of that matters. It’s like I can _breathe_ again. I feel whole, like together we’re a part of something. Buck, I know we barely know each other, and I know this is crazy but I can’t imagine a world without you in it. I _love_ you.”  
  
“No one's ever said that to me before.” Bucky says awestruck, but Steve can tell the feeling is mutual. “I love you too.” Bucky confirms a second later.  
  
“Did you write that down first, or was it just off the top of your head?” Sam asks, glibly, clearly struggling with Steve’s declaration being made to thin-air.  
  
“Sam, I know I’m asking a lot, but the price of—”  
  
“Steve,” Bucky interrupts softly, as he stares at Sam. “Just say thank you.”  
  
Steve blinks. Sam has already said yes with the sagging of his shoulders—the resistance is gone, and Bucky can tell. “We’re really grateful, Sam.” Steve says.  
  
“Yeah, well, I'm not doing it for you.” Sam replies, waving his hand in the air.  
  
“Then why are you doing it?” Steve asks, catching the van keys just as Sam throws them in his direction.  
  
“Because one day I'm gonna need help moving a body, and when that day comes, I don't wanna hear any shit from you.”

 

 

***

 

 

They manage to blag their way up to the fourth floor, because Bucky knows for a fact that they’re so short staffed in that department that they’ll be able to get into a supply closet unnoticed. Which they do, and once they’re there they grab a cart, along with a blood pressure cuff and a portable ventilator. Everything Bucky points to, Steve takes, and once they’re done, Bucky talks Steve through the best way to steal two lab coats, which he manages to do in under ten minutes, without being seen.  
  
“Have you been here before? Is anyone gonna recognise you?” Sam asks, when Steve hands the labcoat over to him in the supply closet. Steve has already pondered that potential outcome, and he has a solution in mind. He gets out a pair of eyeglasses with thick black frames, and shrugs at the exasperated eye-roll Sam and Bucky throw his way. “What?” He says, putting them on. “It works for Superman.”  
  
“We’re actually doing this.” Sam says, “we’re actually, really, doing this?”  
  
Steve doesn’t reply, but he busies himself with checking their stock of stolen items against what Bucky had said to him earlier.  
  
“Steve,” Sam says again, his voice a little softer now. “I just wanna make sure we’re considering all of our options, ‘cause the people that shoot at you usually wind up shooting at me too.”  
  
“No one’s getting shot, Sam.” Steve says firmly, gently shoving Sam back towards the door now that he’s actually wearing the lab coat. “Stick to the plan, and everything will work out.”  
  
“I like how you say ‘plan’ like there’s more to it than just kidnapping a coma patient.” Sam says before heading out first, as discussed. Steve will meet him by the elevator in two minutes, not to arouse suspicion if someone sees them both exit at the same time.  
  
But the second that Steve is alone in the utility cupboard with Bucky at his side, he starts to panic. Because he’s actually doing this. He is inside Metro-General, fully intending to steal a person. This is human trafficking. Sure, there’s some extenuating circumstances, but none of those make him sound like a sane person.  
  
“Bucky, what if this doesn’t work?” He asks because everything could go wrong at any second, and he’s terrified that he’s suddenly been thrust into this position again, with men under his command and the life of another person in his hands. He remembers what Claire told him about guilty people doing stupid shit, and boy did she have him pegged.  
  
Bucky sighs, looking down at his feet and then back up to Steve with his hands outstretched almost as if in surrender. If the dark look in his eyes is anything to go by, then Steve can tell that the possibility has been preying on his mind as well.  
  
“Then I’m dead either way.” Bucky says simply, and it’s really not comforting. Not at all.

 

 

***

 

 

They ride the elevator up to the sixth floor, and just moments before they reach their destination, Sam turns around to face Steve, putting his hand out to keep him at arms length and paying attention.  
  
“Do you remember what I asked you when you told me you were thinking of getting out?” Sam asks. He means out of the Army, and Steve remembers exactly what he’d said some half a year ago.  
  
“You asked me if I knew what made me happy.” Steve replies diligently. At the time, he had had no idea what the answer to that was. His mind had been all over the place, lost at sea, buried in the sand. He had shrugged it off then, because happiness had seemed like an abstract concept, reserved for everyone but him.  
  
“And has that answer changed since I asked you last?”  
  
Steve sees Bucky edge closer to him in the confined space, even if he can’t feel him just yet. Whatever this is, whatever they have, it’s brought Steve closer to being happy than anything or anyone else has come close to in years. He doesn’t want to wrap himself up in guilt anymore, he wants to reach out, and grab hold of any helping hand that’s there, and he wants to break free. He wants to live. Finally.  
  
He remembers how quickly Bucky had come to mind when Tony had asked him if he had anyone special. He remembers how right that answer had felt in his heart when he’s said yes.  
  
“Yeah,” Steve replies quietly, and Sam nods.  
  
“Okay then.” He says just as the elevator dings.  
  
It’s time.  
  
They exit the elevator, and Sam follows Steve to Bucky’s room, while Steve expertly dodges both Claire and Dr. Dugan as they go about their work nearby.  The room looks exactly as it had when Steve visited a few days ago, with a few more additions courtesy of Bucky’s niece and her skills as a young artist.  
  
“Okay, get me on the gurney, quick.” Bucky says, in a no-nonsense tone as he hovers between the bed and the door. He manages to simultaneously act as their look out, while giving Steve instructions on how to attach the portable vent, and safely get Bucky’s body on the move.  
  
“Oh my God, _Steve_.” Sam hisses as he makes his way to the other side of Bucky’s bed.  
  
“Sam, don’t freak out on me now buddy—we don’t have much time.” Steve says distractedly as he goes about carefully unhooking the monitors and Bucky says, “guys we really gotta hurry this up,” from where he’s standing, still watching the door.  
  
“No but—”  
  
“Don’t worry, the machine’s just helping him breathe—”  
  
“Steve! Listen to me! _This is the guy!_ This is the guy I was trying to set you up with! This is the guy you stood up!” Sam says hurriedly.  
  
“What?” Steve says.  
  
“What?” Bucky repeats.  
  
“I was gonna meet…” Steve looks at Bucky.  
  
Three months ago, before his setback, before his run in at the grocery store, Steve had begrudgingly agreed to go on a blind date that Sam and Riley had set up. He had even made it as far as the right subway stop of this mutual friend of theirs home, before chickening out.  
  
Bucky’s hovering in the corner, looking just as surprised. He actually looks a little pale. It’s the first time he’s even looked like a ghost since they met. “I was gonna meet _you_?” Steve can’t believe it, and Sam ignores Steve as he talks to himself—to Bucky—and continues with his hands gesturing wildly as he goes.  
  
“And James never made it either because some asshole cab driver hit him with his car!” Sam says.  
  
“It was you.” Steve whispers, alternating between staring at Bucky’s body, and his spirit hovering beside him. “Is that it?” Steve wonders. “Is that why I can see you?”  
  
“I was _supposed_ to meet you.” Bucky whispers as if he can hardly believe it either.  
  
Steve can’t stop thinking how things would be different if they’d met. He never would have been in the grocery store that night. He never would have bumped into Toro’s wife. He might never have spiralled back into the pit of despair he’d found himself in for the last three months. But then, things rarely turn out as they should.  
  
“How do you know him?” Steve asks, turning back to his best friend, and he could swear that he sees a blush appear on Sam’s cheeks.  
  
“I'm friends with Natasha! They’re practically brother and sister.”  
  
“Nat...wait, Natasha is the _Black Widow_?”  
  
“What?" Bucky hisses.  
  
“Didn’t she leave you handcuffed to a bed in your senior year?” Steve asks, just as the pieces start to fall into place. He’d never seen a picture of Sam’s ex to make the connection, but he finds the realisation hilarious now.  
  
“I knew I recognised you!” Bucky says then, a little loudly, even though it’s only Steve that can hear him. “You’re the Falcon!”  
  
“The Falcon? _Sam_ is the _Falcon_?” Steve asks incredulously, remembering that Bucky had told him about the nickname in reference to a certain act performed during foreplay.  
  
“What? Shut up! No one's called me that since college!” Sam splutters. “How did you—?”  
  
“I can’t believe this,” Bucky mutters over Sam’s horror. “I can’t believe your partner in crime is the goddamn _Falcon_ —we are so screwed.”  
  
“So _Sam_ ’s the one who tongued Nat at her wedding?”  
  
“What? How did you know that? No one knows that!”  
  
“It's Bucky! He’s...he’s _James._ Sam, don’t you see?” Steve says for what feels like the hundredth time.  
  
“Oh, my God. He’s really here, isn’t he?” Sam says breathlessly.  
  
“I told you!”  
  
“Shit. _Shit_ , get him on the gurney, I don't want them killing Nat’s little brother! Come _on_ .” And Steve’s really glad that Sam believed him far quicker than Natasha did when she heard the same story yesterday.  
  
“OK. Be really gentle—” Bucky starts to say, but he’s interrupted when they hear a muffled voice at the door.  
  
_“Yeah, I’m here already.”  
  
_ “That’s Brock,” Bucky says, after sticking his head through the wall into the corridor to make sure. “He’s fifteen minutes early!” He hisses in a panic.  
  
The door starts to open, and they can hear the doctor’s voice clearly now: “As soon as the sister shows we’re ready,” Rumlow tells someone on the phone. “It won’t be long now.”  
  
“He’s coming in!” Bucky says urgently. “You have to stall!”  
  
Steve doesn’t think, he just throws himself out of the room, narrowly missing Brock by a fraction of an inch before he slams the door shut behind him.  Brock frowns into his phone, and says to whoever’s on the other line that he’ll call them right back.  
  
“I’m sorry, you are?”  
  
“Dr. Rogers,” Steve introduces himself, looking at Brock’s name-tag for a second. “Dr. Rumlow, is it?”  
  
“Yes, that’s right.” Rumlow responds cautiously.  
  
“It’s nice to meet you.”  
  
“Tell him you’re a special consultant from SHIELD medical—” Bucky whispers gently into Steve’s ear, having appeared out of nowhere by his side.  
  
“The family requested that I take a look at Mr. Barnes. I’m a special consultant from SHIELD medical.” Steve says.  
  
“SHIELD? No one mentioned to me anything about—”  
  
“Tell him Dr. Phillips sent you,” Bucky says, interrupting Rumlow, his voice lending courage to Steve’s conviction. “Tell him that there’s new evidence that full functionality can be restored.”  
  
“Dr. Phillips sent me down for a final evaluation. There’s new evidence to support that full functionality can be restored.” Steve repeats diligently, and Rumlow’s frowning now, his eyebrows raised.  
  
“We need to run some tests, so if you’ll excuse us.” Steve says, in an attempt to dismiss the other doctor.  
  
“Hold up buddy, who’s _we_?” Rumlow asks, confused, and most definitely suspicious.  
  
“My team is downstairs with a signed order from Dr. Phillips, so I really need to—”  
  
“Look, I’ve had no verbal or written instructions about this, pal. You won’t mind if I talk to Dr. Phillips, first?” Rumlow says, and Steve’s about to suggest that he go do so, when he sees that Rumlow’s not leaving to go find Dr. Phillips at all, but rather he’s reaching for his cell phone to call him instead.  
  
“It’s nothing personal,” Rumlow says, and he’s actually sneering a little, like he knows he’s right, like he knows that Steve’s lie is exactly that, and he’s about to catch him red-handed.  
  
There’s nothing for it. Steve has to act and he has to act fast, so the solution, when it presents itself, is really quite perfect.  
  
He punches Rumlow square in the face.  
  
“Well it sure feels personal.” Steve mutters, watching with grim satisfaction as Rumlow falls to the ground in a heap. Bucky whines behind him at the ever growing set of speed bumps that keep coming their way, and Sam, when he arrives is none-too-happy either.  
  
“Really, Steve?” Sam mutters as he looks down at the doctor lying on the ground, cradling his face while Steve shakes his hand out in the air to alleviate the pain in his knuckles. “The felonies just keep piling up!”  
  
“So I’m not convincing as a doctor!” Steve shouts, grabbing the other end of the gurney to help steer Bucky’s body out of the room, just as Rumlow starts to get to his feet.  
  
“Security!” The doctor starts shouting, scrambling after them as they race to get away.  
  
“Man, shut the hell up!” Sam shouts back, before pushing a cart of medical supplies into the corridor to block Rumlow’s path.  Steve stares, stunned, but Sam just turns to focus on the task at hand, and shrugs. “What?” He says at Steve’s open-mouthed surprise. “I do what you do, only slower.”  
  
Bucky tells them not to jostle his body, but to speed up their progress all the same, and a confused chorus of “ _What the hell?” “What’s going on?”_ and _“Oh my god”_ follows them from various passers-by as they keep running.  
  
“Take a right up here.” Bucky advises, and Steve pulls at the gurney to follow suit. He sees a flash of red hair in the distance, and more security guards are running forward. “Right here! Right, right, _right_ !” Bucky keeps saying until Sam and Steve swing the gurney and take a sharp turn.  
  
The elevator’s in sight, and if they can just get to the van, if they can just make it a little further.  
  
“Hold it right there!” A security guard shouts, as he blocks their path with a taser in his hand, aimed and ready to fire on Steve. No one is more surprised than Rogers when Sam tackles the security guard coming towards them, pushing them both to the ground and into the closing elevator.  
  
Now Steve’s on his own with Bucky’s body and Bucky’s ghost, neither of whom are telling him what the hell he should do next, and there are more guards crowding into the corridors, and the room is spinning, and Steve’s starting to panic.  
  
“ _Steve_.”  
  
It still amazes him, how Bucky’s voice grounds him so suddenly, just like in the subway, just like in the apartment, it stops him from spiralling into his stupor, and he looks up at the ghost.  
  
“My breathing tube—it’s gone.” Bucky says, and Steve looks down in horror to where the tube’s been disconnected. It must have been knocked over when Sam dived for the guard. The portable ventilator is still hissing and humming but the air’s not getting to where it needs to go, and neither are Steve and Bucky.  
  
“What—What do I do? _Bucky,_ tell me what to do!”  
  
“It’s too late.”  
  
And Bucky’s actually fading away. Steve can see right through him and it’s the worst thing he’s ever seen—because even though all this time Bucky’s been out of reach, he’s still been _there_ , he’s still close by, to talk to, to listen...but now…  
  
“It’s strong.” Bucky says ominously. “It’s pulling me away.” And Steve doesn’t know if he believes in heaven or hell, or any kind of higher being but he can’t bear to see whoever or whatever’s in charge take away someone he loves. Not again.  
  
“Be stronger!” Steve shouts. “You can do this, you can, please, _please_ , Buck.” He’s begging now, and Bucky’s face is creased and frowning and still _fading fast_ . No, no, _no_ .  
  
“Please don’t leave me,” Steve says desperately. “Don’t go, Bucky please, stay. You brought me back, this can’t be how it ends, please just hang on, please, Bucky, _please_ —”  
  
“I can’t, I’m sorry... _Steve_ …”  
  
The sound of a flatline rings in his ears and Steve doesn’t think, he just moves. He leans in to perform CPR, and his mouth ghosts across Bucky’s lips. He pushes all of the air in his own lungs down and out and wills it into Bucky’s. _Breathe. Don’t go. Just breathe_.  
  
For a second, he thinks he can feel Bucky responding, he thinks it might have worked, but then two security guards are slamming his body backwards and onto the ground and he’s flailing but it’s no use. Rumlow has caught up with him, and he’s advancing with a needle no doubt filled with a sedative.  
  
Steve struggles intensely in a desperate attempt to get back to Bucky’s body, but a third guard is now holding down his legs while the other two are practically sitting on his arms. He can’t get up and the flat line is screeching, so loud. Too loud. It’s too late.  
  
“Bucky!” He yells, still frantic, still struggling. “Just help him, _please!_ ” He begs to anyone who’ll listen.  
  
In the middle of a growing crowd of onlookers, Steve can see Dugan trying to get a handle on the situation, And Natasha’s there too, looking lost, while her husband shields their daughter into the expanse of his chest, rocking her in his arms. She must be so scared. Steve knows he is, and he’s a grown-ass man.  
  
_Beep.  
  
_ Steve forgets to breathe.  
  
_Beep beep.  
  
_ But Bucky doesn’t.  
  
_Beep beep beep.  
  
_ On the gurney, without the ventilator to assist him, Bucky takes a breath, and then another, and another. He’s breathing on his own. His chest is visibly moving up and down, and Dr. Dugan rushes forward with Natasha in tow.  
  
Bucky takes another breath and this one catches in his throat. He coughs harshly, and when he tries to sit up, with his eyes still closed, Dugan puts a gentle hand on his shoulder, and says,  “easy kid, stay still.”  
  
Bucky groans as he opens his eyes, just barely squinting in the bright lights of the corridor.  
  
“James?” Nat asks softly, her voice shaking as she grabs Bucky’s hand. “James, can you hear me?” Her face is red and blotchy and streaked with tears, but the hope is just radiating off of her, and Steve’s heart soars to see it. It’s a far cry from the angry knife-wielding woman he’d met previously.  
  
The security guards are watching with confusion, and they drag Steve to his feet. He’s more than happy to comply because he has to get closer, he has to _see_ . Bucky’s breathing. Bucky’s _alive_. Dugan starts checking his vitals, and Nat’s trying not to get in the way, while completely refusing to let go of her brother’s hand.  
  
“Nat,” Steve hears Bucky rasp, and his voice sounds hoarse from disuse—his throat no doubt a little scarred from having his breathing tube roughly pulled out in their hurried escape attempt—but god, it’s his voice. Harsh as it is, it’s music to Steve’s ears. “Did I hit my head?” Bucky whispers, as he winces a little, sounding sore.  
  
That’s _Bucky’s voice_ , his real voice, and Nat’s crying now but she’s smiling too and she’s leaning in close to Bucky’s chest, and they’re both closing their eyes in their embrace, and Steve’s getting teary too.  
  
“I can’t believe I almost lost you.” He hears Natasha’s muffled words, as her fingers clutch desperately at the green hospital gown Bucky’s wearing. “I can’t…”  
  
And then Nat looks up and over to Steve, as though having suddenly remembered the series of events that lead to this moment, to Bucky’s awakening.  
  
“It’s okay,” she says, turning her head against Bucky’s shoulder and gesturing to the guards holding Steve to let him go. They look as perplexed as most of the other onlookers, and in their stunned silence they let their prisoner go.  
  
Steve approaches slowly, tentatively taking his cues from Nat, and despite it all he can’t help the smile that’s spreading over his own face. This is it. They made it.  
  
“Hey,” Steve says quietly, because Bucky is real and tangible and alive and Steve can reach out and touch him. Bucky frowns, but Steve won’t be deterred from trying to coax him out of his confusion. “It’s me.” He says simply, because maybe Bucky’s just dumbfounded by it all.  
  
“I'm sorry, I don't...”  
  
“Bucky?”  
  
And the words that follow are like a knife to Steve’s chest.  
  
“Who the hell is Bucky?” James whispers in a panic, while his body instinctively leans closer to Natasha, pressing himself into the side rails, and away from Steve.  
  
“James, it's Steve.” Natasha says carefully, brushing the hair away from Bucky’s face—in the same way that Steve had imagined doing last night, and in the early hours of this morning when they were both lying in bed, talking about the future. “You don't remember Steve?” She says evenly, being careful not to break eye contact with Bucky.  
  
“The apartment.” Steve says quietly, lest his own voice break. “The rooftop. The gallery. Nothing?” He tries, but Bucky’s looking more and more scared and he’s shaking his head in tiny, jerky movements that break Steve’s heart to see. He reaches out to touch Bucky’s hand, but James pulls away. He _flinches.  
  
_ “Honey,” Nat says, drawing Bucky’s eye once more. “You don't remember him at all?” She asks, her voice tender yet seemingly laced with steel. She’s shielding Bucky now, her protective instincts kicking in.  
  
“No,” Bucky says desperately, and it’s the final straw. The air disappears from Steve’s lungs, and a kind of abject horror settles around his chest, tightening like a vice. He can’t lose him, not after everything.  
  
But there’s _nothing_ in Bucky’s eyes to say that he knows Steve in the slightest, and it blindsides him. There’s no trace of recognition, there’s not a hint of anything except...except fear, and Steve can taste the bile in the back of his throat at the realisation that he put that there—that Bucky’s afraid of _him_.  
  
He steps away, and really it’s a miracle that he doesn’t stumble. Nat’s giving him a strange look, but all Steve can do is focus on the way that Bucky—no, _James_ —the way that _James_ is edging closer to Natasha, for protection against the stranger in their midst. For protection against Steve.  
  
_I love you too.  
  
_ Steve should’ve known it was too good to be true.

 

 

.

.

 

**After.**

 

.

.

 

 

James feels calm.  
  
He’s snuck himself onto the paeds unit before Nat and Clint arrive to pick him up and take him home. He’s back in front of his old familiar mural, letting his mind wander to a place where the fields stretch out for miles, and the sunflowers sway in the breeze.  
  
_Sunflowers were always my mom’s favourite,_ he thinks, before frowning in confusion, because Winifred Barnes always preferred tulips.  
  
He sees Clint round the corner at the far end of the corridor. “There he is,” his brother-in-law says as he jogs over to join him.  
  
Today, James finally gets to leave the hospital, and he couldn’t be happier. He’s never been good at sitting around doing nothing, so to sit around, do nothing _and_ be prescribed bed rest? Well, that’s his idea of hell.  
  
The artwork looks different for some reason, but he can’t quite pinpoint what might have changed. As far as his eyes are concerned, it’s exactly the same. Every petal is just where it should be, but it’s as if he has a newfound appreciation for it that he didn’t have before. He finds himself reaching out to touch the canvas, brushing his fingers over the artist’s signature that sits lonely in the corner of the piece.  
  
He feels sad, but he’s doesn’t know why.  
  
“S. G. R.” He reads aloud, as he traces the thick ridges of the paint on the canvas, mimicking the curve of the S with a tilt of his wrist. For a moment, he’s overcome with a sense of déjà vu.  
  
“What was that?” Clint asks, as he sidles up next to him.  
  
“Nothing,” James says, with a little headshake.  
  
“You ready to head back to ours?” Clint asks, because they’ve all decided that James will stay with them while he gets back on his feet, and while the estate agent Clint had been speaking to sorts out moving her client back out of the apartment.    
  
“Kate made us promise to bake you cookies, so Nat will thank you for the mess in the kitchen later.” Clint continues with a wink, and James smiles.  
  
He’s used to spending all of his days roaming the halls of Metro-General, but it’s different on this side of the fence, and he can’t help but think he has so much more to do, now that he’s been given his life back, after being so close to not having one at all. _This was a good last day.  
  
_ James shivers, and Clint hands him his jacket.  
  
“Yeah,” James says, though he’s reluctant to look away from the painting for some reason. “I’m ready, let’s go.”

 

 

***

 

 

In the subway, he almost gets on the Q express train by mistake, but he figures he’s just distracted, and when he passes the Brooklyn Veteran’s Centre on Chapel Street, he has the strangest urge to go in.  
  
He leaves his name and number with the receptionist in case they need any doctors to volunteer for a couple days a week before he’s ready to return to work. He’s still on sick-leave, but if the rumours are true, the attending position at Metro-General has become conveniently vacant now that Rumlow has decided to head to D.C. after all.  
  
On his way out, James notices a flyer on the wall, advertising an exhibition in a gallery in Williamsburg, and James thinks he’ll see if Nat wants to join him later in the week.  
  
He doesn’t make a note of the address though, and by the time he gets back, he’s completely wiped. He forgets to even mention it.  
  
“Clint’s making lasagna,” Nat says quietly, when she finds James dozing on the sofa, with Kate sleeping on top of him, and the cartoons on the TV on mute. “I gave him your mom’s old recipe.” She tells him, before making to leave, thinking that James is too tired to respond.  
  
He reaches out to grab her wrist at the last second.  
  
“Thank you, Natalia,” he says sleepily, using the name that only he can get away with.  
  
“Go back to sleep,” she says, leaving a kiss on his forehead before doing the same to her daughter. “I’ll wake you guys up when it’s ready.”

 

 

***

 

 

After one too many incidents involving broken glass and a sheepish little girl, Barnes and Barton decide to take the archery lessons outside. It’s a beautiful day, and they’re on their way to Prospect Park when Kate’s four-year-old impatience gets the better of her, and she shoots her small arrows down the street.  
  
Clint praises her aim, but asks her to wait until they’re not near so many cars, while James jogs across the street to get the arrow back. It’s landed between the gutter and the front tyre of a parked car, so he has to get down on his hands and knees to retrieve it. When he straightens up, he waves the arrow in the air, like a trophy, and Kate jumps up and down happily.  
  
James turns around, still grinning, and he sees a great big blonde man plastered up against the glass of a shop window. His nose is pressed flat behind the sign that reads, _Asgard_. It’s some kind of magic shop, but James thinks this blonde hipster-slash-bodybuilder-slash-surfer looks nothing like any magician he’s ever seen.  
  
James is a little taken aback but the shopkeepers large smile is infectious and Barnes can’t help but give him a thumbs up in return.  
  
“Good tidings!” The man bellows, his voice muffled from inside. “It pleases me to see your corporeal form!” He says strangely, while James backs away slowly to rejoin Kate and Clint.  
  
“You’re getting really good at this.” James praises his niece, when he hands the arrow back to her and she grins. “Just like Hawkeye,” he says, nudging Clint and using an old nickname he picked up in college.  
  
“Nu-uh,” Kate says with a cute scrunching of her nose. “Daddy’s Hawk-Guy, I’m Hawk _eye.”_ She insists, with a tone that’s not to be argued with, so James holds his hands up in surrender and goes with it.  
  
“Hey, did you know that guy?” Clint asks later, when they get to the park, referring to the jolly-blonde-giant, but James just shakes his head.  
  
“No, but judging by all the weed I could smell, he probably greets everyone that way.”

 

 

***

 

 

He dreams that he’s flying, and then he’s falling.  
  
A hand reaches out, but when they touch, all James can feel is pain.  
  
He lets go.

 

 

***

 

 

On his last hospital check-up, after he gets a clean-bill of health, Dugan, Morita, Falsworth, Daisy and Claire take him out for a celebratory meal, and when he gets home, he feels full of food, and warmth, and love.  
  
But something’s still missing.

 

 

***

 

 

“We only rented it for a month.” Natasha tells him when they arrive at his old apartment. He can finally move back in again, and as much as he loves being close to the Barton’s, he can’t hide his smile.  
  
Until that weird empty feeling that’s been plaguing of late, rears its head once more.  
  
“Did you move something?” He asks, with a slight frown.  
  
“No.” Nat replies, sitting James’ bag on the table, and checking that all of the fresh groceries she’d gotten in are still where she put them in the kitchen.  
  
“It’s funny I have the strangest feeling...like something’s...different.” He says when she returns to the hallway, and it’s the same feeling he had when he was staring at the mural in paediatrics. It’s the same feeling he’s had every day this week, hell, every day this month. Like there’s something missing inside of him.  
  
“Everything’s here, just as you left it.” Clint assures him, and James smiles.  
  
“I guess it’s just been a long time.” Regardless, he’s happy to be home. “Thanks guys,” he says, giving Kate a hug while she’s still in Clint’s arms, and squeezing the other man’s shoulder in thanks.  
  
When it’s Nat’s turn, he gets the feeling that she won’t ever let go, she’s squeezing him so tight, but then she says “oh!” suddenly, like she’s remembered something, and she’s pulling away from the embrace.  
  
“I almost forgot, I got you a present.” She says, handing over the gift. James unwraps it happily, while gushing that she shouldn’t have, and when the last of the colourful paper falls away, he sees that it’s a book on Monet.  
  
“I saw you looking through his paintings on your phone,” Nat admits, and James finds himself flipping through pages hurriedly, as if he’s searching for a particular piece.  He stops when he gets to a full page spread in the centre of the book.  
  
“' _Reflections of Clouds on the Water-Lily Pond_ ,'” he says, without even having to look at the title and description on the next page.  
  
“Isn’t that the one in the MoMa?” Clint asks, when he takes a look. “We should go see it in person next Saturday.”  
  
“Yeah!” Kate agrees encouragingly, because, well, _she’s four_ , and kids her age make excellent cheerleaders.  
  
“I’d like that,” James says, as they all start to leave. “Thank you,” he directs to Nat, “I love it.”  
  
“No problem,” she says, hanging back a little. “You sure you’re gonna be okay?”  
  
“Yeah, Nat, I promise. It’s just...old ghosts, I guess.” He says, but he makes sure to say it with a convincing smile. He’s keenly aware of why Natasha’s clinging on a little more than usual, and he won’t begrudge her that much. “I’ll talk to you later, okay?” And he kisses her on the cheek, and gently nudges her out the door.  
  
“See ya, _brother from another mother_.” Nat calls from the corridor.  
  
“Buh-bye, _sister from another mister_.” James responds accordingly.  
  
When the door closes, and he’s alone, James takes a long deep breath.  
  
When his family died, he remembers how reluctant he was to return to the family apartment they had lived in together. He had avoided if for years, until he could avoid it no longer. When he had first decided to repaint the kitchen, he had broken down in tears, and it was his elderly neighbour Peggy that had suggested some things—like the pencil notches tracking his and Rebecca’s height over time—remain.  
  
“A fresh start doesn’t have to mean you’re getting rid of your past,” she had said, while serving him tea, and handing him her handkerchief. “Your history helps shape you into who you are. You just have to decide who you want that to be moving forward.”  
  
As he walks through his apartment, the only change that he can visibly see is a ring on the coffee table that wasn’t there before. He runs his finger along the circular mark, and he feels something, but it’s not anger. He doesn’t know what it is.  
  
When he heads back into the hall he notices all the daylight shining down, and he realises the door to the roof must be open. He heads up there to close it, but when he arrives he sees that he’s not alone.  
  
There’s a tall man with broad shoulders standing by the old advertising stand at the edge of the roof. The sunlight makes his blonde hair shine, and he’s preoccupied with cleaning paint-brushes in a pail of water, so Bucky can appreciate his narrow hips, and tight-butt without being noticed.  
  
But then he actually sees the wall, and he blows his cover with a loud exclamation. “Oh my god!” He says, because the wall—the blank wall that his mother used to love to hide with big canvases of temporary art, is...well, it’s...beautiful. The white plaster has been covered in swipes of blue paint, both thick and thin in places. White cracks that shatter across the plaster, marbling over the grain, create the impression of waves crashing in the surf with tides peaked and reaching up and over the still water beneath.  
  
It’s a seascape in the middle of the city—a window to the shore, forcing its way to the surface between the skyscrapers across the horizon. It’s thrilling and inviting, and James can practically taste the sea-salt in the air. He can hear Rebecca’s laughter while she runs across the boardwalk, and his father’s voice calling out for her to be careful, the scent of his mother’s perfume. _Art, and the sea, they’re the only thing that can get me out of my own head.  
  
_ “Oh!” He hears the stranger say in surprise, now having seen him, and James swipes his hand over his eyes roughly to brush away any evidence of tears there. The painter stands to attention, and like any decent human being, he pretends not to notice James’ emotions on show. “Hey.” He says quietly.  
  
And James realises then that It’s the man from the hospital. He hardly remembers waking up at all but he could never forget the blue of those eyes, and the way his face had fallen at James’ lack of recognition. The crushed look of being forgotten. No, he’s not going to forget that raw emotion any time soon. Truth be told, it haunts him a little. The last time James had seen him, he was staggering backwards, shaking his head and struggling to keep his emotions in check. _It’s Steve,_ Nat had said then, but has carefully not mentioned since, _you don’t remember Steve?  
  
_ James remembers once telling a woman that her husband had died on the table—she had that look about her as well— _shattered disbelief_ . Shaking her head, she’d whispered _no, no, no,_ under her breath over and over again until she was backed up against the wall, and sliding down to the ground as her grief overwhelmed her.  
  
“Steve.” The man says. “I’m...I’m Steve.” He sounds unsure, but so goddamned earnest that James can hardly breathe to look at him.  “Do you know me?” The stranger asks.  
  
James nods. “From the hospital.” He clarifies and Steve’s face falls. James gets the feeling there’s more to their relationship than he realises.  
  
“Don’t worry, I know you’re nervous,” he says, when James stays silent. “And you have plenty of reasons to be. I’m just...I wanted you to…” He stops. He takes a deep breath, squares his shoulders and looks James right in the eye. Barnes wants to step forward, he wants to stand closer to the man—he feels drawn to him somehow and it’s a little unnerving, but the logical part of him—the part of him that has no memory to associate with this random painter, save for a momentary meeting after waking up from a _coma_ —that part of him keeps him standing still.  
  
“I wanted you to have your mural.” Steve finishes.  
  
“How…?” James starts to say. _How did you know?_ He wants to ask, because he doesn’t understand why this means so much to him—why his heart is beating so quickly all of a sudden, or why the sight of the beautifully painted ocean is making his eyes tear up once more. He hasn’t thought of his family like that in years, and now the emotion feel so raw that he’s weak in the knees.  
  
He tries to ignore the way that Steve is leaning in close, like a flower desperate for the sun.  
  
“How did you get up here?” James finishes instead, ignoring the existential questions in favour of practicality. He coughs to clear away the lump in his throat, and blinks to hide his unexplainable feelings.  
  
Steve doesn’t wilt like James expects, and he’s stupidly grateful for that fact. Instead the painter stares at him knowingly, before ducking his head, and scratching the back of his neck. “Uh, the spare key?” He says it like it should be obvious, “by the fire extinguisher.”  
  
The one that James hides for emergencies, when he’s worked a double shift, and he’s desperate for sleep, and his eyes are half closed and no matter how many times he tries to find his keys in his satchel, he always comes up empty. The key he’s never told anyone, not even Nat, about.  
  
“Look, the last thing I want to do is scare you.” Steve says, and that earnest look is back again. James finds himself staring at Steve a little too long, and he can’t escape the overwhelming sense of déjà vu, and boy has that been happening a lot lately.  
  
“Goodbye Bu— _James_.”  
  
“Wait!” James calls, because he doesn’t know what the hell is going on, but he’s never going to find out if this guy leaves.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
But James panics. He has no idea how to explain the feeling in his chest, and the closest thing he can think of is...longing? Maybe? It reminds him of his family’s accident, and how he was left floundering in loss, but he doesn’t know how to say any of that without sounding like a complete nutcase.  
  
“The key,” he stutters instead in his flustered state. “The key, I need—” _You? I think?_ “—the key back.”  
  
Steve does wilt this time, his eyes look a little duller, but he pastes on a small smile for James’s sake. “Right,” he says quietly, stepping forward. This stranger. This Steve.  
  
_Steve.  
  
_ “I know you.” James says, grasping at the tiny shred of courage that’s decided to rear up from inside of him all of a sudden. “How do I know you?”  
  
“Maybe from your dreams.” Steve suggests, and as corny as it sounds, it actually makes more sense than anything else James can come up with. Steve has the key out now, and he goes to hand it over, pressing it into James’ palm to make sure that their hands touch.  
  
And it’s electric.  
  
_I think that if you could ever really touch me, I might wake up from all of this.  
  
_ All of James’ memories seems to rush at him all at once. He’s shouting for someone to leave, he’s screaming that he doesn’t understand, he’s standing in the bar, he’s watching Steve get hit, go down, and he’s apologising profusely, and then he’s following Steve. Everywhere he goes, everything he does, Steve’s there.   _“You’ll do,”_ he remembers telling him, and it’s the understatement of the century.  He’s talking Steve through a medical procedure in the subway, and then he’s watching as Steve checks out, and all he can do is watch from the sidelines, like a useless idiot. There’s nothing he can do but watch and wait,  and it’s the worst he’s felt in years.  _“This can wait,”_ he’d said then, even though the possibility of losing their lead terrified him. But Steve comes first. Steve matters more, he can hear him when nobody else can and that has to mean something, it has to.  _“I love you too,”_ he’d said, and the coil of the unknown finally starts to unwind in his stomach, because Steve feels it too, it’s not just him. It’s not just him. He’s surrounded by Steve’s artwork, and he’s sharing this beautiful, personal part of him with James and it’s astounding. He’s in a field of sunflowers, but he’s not alone. Not anymore.  
  
James gasps.  
  
“Your…your mom’s name was Sarah,” he says all of a sudden, his words hurried, his voice breathless as more and more memories come rushing back. “It wasn’t a dream,” James says, his breath shuddering while his head aches. “I thought you were smaller,” he says, almost laughing through his tears, looking Steve up a down, and Steve’s eyes are shining now so it’s all worth it.  
  
“I thought I’d lost you.” Steve admits, and James shakes his head.  
  
“Not a chance.” He promises, lifting his hand up to trace Steve’s chin. “You shaved,” he says, noticing the difference now almost instantly. Steve’s skin looks lighter, like there’s a weight been lifted from off of his shoulders, and it’s more of a relief than James could ever convey.  
  
Steve leans into his touch. They’re here, and they can have this, and it’s beautiful. The empty feeling in the pit of his stomach is gone. The strange sense that something was missing, has left and now all James can think about is Steve.  
  
“James,” Steve whispers, a little brokenly, their separation clearly having taken its toll.  
  
“Bucky.” He corrects instantly, grinning from ear to ear. He feels whole again, and Peggy’s words about a fresh start, blend together with the conversation he had with Steve about starting over. His past, and present are finally back together again, and James knows who he wants to be in life, and more importantly, he knows who he wants to spend his life _with_.  
  
He rests both of his hands on either side of Steve’s neck, and he rubs his thumbs over Steve’s jaw, before pulling him in for a long awaited kiss.  
  
“My name is Bucky.” He says, when they finally break for air, and Steve laughs, and says, “Whatever you say, _Buck_ , whatever you say.”

 

**.**

**.**

 

**The End.**

 

**.**

**.**

 

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies for all the cavities that fluffy ending might've caused, thank you for reading, and thank you to the organisers of the Stucky Big Bang 2016 for sorting out this whole thing! I've never taken part in one before so it was fun! Stressful but fun ;)
> 
> I put in a lot of little references, cameos and easter eggs, so kudos to anyone who spots them all! Let me know in the comments if you noticed them! ;) I hope you liked it, and if you get the chance, reblog on [tumblr](http://mellaithwen.tumblr.com/post/149575771636/title-our-souls-they-were-made-to-last-by) :)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Fanmix] Our Souls, They Were Made To last](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7879960) by [DuendeVerde4](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DuendeVerde4/pseuds/DuendeVerde4)




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